Of course, I'm over-simplifying the issue. But I think students, teachers and school budgets would all benefit from letting go of their obsessions with textbooks and forming obsessions with the new world of public domain works and Wiki-generated educational materials.

The poorest countries will share in the richness of human culture. Philanthropists have been trying to get computers in the hands of impoverished children for years. One of the challenges has been to provide them with the Internet access that would open the world of knowledge to them.

But while they're off working on that, why not pack those computers will low-cost content? The One Laptop Per Child project is working on a to be handed out to slum-dwelling kids around the world. What if every age-appropriate book on Earth was pre-loaded on the hard drive or flash drive? What if every child in Afghanistan were handed a tablet pre-loaded with every back issue of National Geographic magazine? How would that open their eyes to the world?

There's little doubt that the growing availability of books and periodical content -- at low or no cost -- will change the spread of knowledge. The combination of inexpensive storage, digital formats, mass-scanning projects and improved search capabilities will transform our world in ways we can't imagine.