Arduino - http://arduino.cc/ http://arduino.cc/ and its many derivatives, and more recently Raspberry Pi - http://www.raspberrypi.org/ http://www.raspberrypi.or

Arduino - http://arduino.cc/ http://arduino.cc/ and its many derivatives, and more recently Raspberry Pi - http://www.raspberrypi.org/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/ are going to create the same effect as the Commodore 6. Cheap enough for curious kids to buy themselves, very easy to use, both with a strong connection to the real world. In addition, as well as a stand-alone internet connected device, the Raspberry Pi makes a cheap Linux desktop computer.