Mr Quadir replies that thanks to economic development driven by mobile phones, parents can afford to educate their children.

ECONOMIST: Finishing the job

Iqbal Quadir, a Bangladeshi who emigrated to America to become an investment banker and then a business academic, had a dream of bringing mobile phones to his homeland.

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By Iqbal Quadir, a professor of the practice of development and entrepreneurship at MIT, the founding director of its Legatum Center, and the founder of Grameenphone, in Bangladesh.

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But if those netbooks turn out to be, in effect, large mobile phones with keyboards that access the internet via mobile networks, as also seems likely, Mr Quadir and his camp can claim to have won the day.

ECONOMIST: Finishing the job

Mr Quadir likes to tell the story of a barber in Bangladesh who could not afford the rent for a shop, so he bought a mobile phone and a motorbike instead, scheduling appointments by phone and going to his clients' homes.

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And advocates of mobile phones, including Iqbal Quadir, who has sparred with Mr Negroponte on the subject, point out that mobile phones provide immediate economic benefits, which enables them to spread in a self-sustaining, bottom-up way, without the need for massive government funding.

ECONOMIST: Finishing the job