I think its an interesting project, and if they can actually produce it as inexpensively as they hope (or even twice that - $50 is still a good price point!), I think it will be useful in schools simply because kids will be able to own one themselves, bring it home etc, which I think will inspire (at least some of) them to learn more and do more interesting things with them outside of the classroom. As somebody in another HN post about this said: "get technology into as many hands as possible" - this is certainly a great thing!

However, I think the statements in the video about how computers have become much more complex and that is why people aren't learning to program them at a young age is incorrect. BBC Micros and ZX Spectrums (and Commodore's and Amigas and all the rest) were, IMHO, not easier to learn with compared to todays computers. They were actually much less accessible and therefore attracted the type of people who were able to learn. Smaller audiences of more capable people (because the less capable people were never attracted to them in the first place) gives the illusion that they were simpler and easier, even when they weren't.

Todays computers are usable by just about anyone and most people are exposed to them in some way through games, social networking, websites.. whatever. The amount of people learning to program is probably a lot higher today than it ever was as the barrier to entry is so much lower (going from something as simple as Scratch, to web development with Javascript, to Ruby and Python and Processing - a lot of simple, yet powerful, tools (with instant feedback) are now available), its just that the percentage of people learning to program out of all the people using computers is now a lot lot lower.

I don't see how this device would be able to make it any easier than a full blown computer (once somebody found and installed the software for the kids) except that 1) it will have the tools preinstalled and 2) it will be inexpensive enough that each kid can be given their own one creating a sense of ownership and hopefully inspiring and encouraging them to do cool stuff with them (which in turn means they learn more).

TL;DR: This thing does have potential, but I think they (at least the people who made the video) are focusing on the wrong thing (bringing back the 80's of computers and programming because they feel it was simpler back then, while I believe it is a lot lot simpler now).