As these laptops are technologically inferior to Western technology, a new divide between owners of advanced and ever-progressive technology and owners of old-fashioned technology will emerge. The emerging divide then is not about have and have-nots, but about those who have advanced technology and those who have inferior technology.
I'm not certain that you can claim that they're technologically inferior to Western technology, as they *are* Western technology. ;) I do think I know what you meant, in the other sense of those words, too, and still don't find the argument compelling. If we can build a perfectly usable 500Mhz laptop for a hundred bucks that runs the *state of the art* in available software - that is to say, the very same software (or its close kin, modified for the hardware of the laptop) that is on my desktop here in Indiana - what's the use of having a $3k "Western" desktop machine? Plenty of the technology that's "new" and on the mass-market here... well, it sucks rocks. Inefficient, sloppily constructed, cheap junk. Sometimes it is better to be the "backward" consumer of well-tested, reliable technology. Somebody talk about computers-as-tools versus computers-as-entertainment and distraction devices? I think that it would be a productive addition to the conversation. --elijah