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Perhaps writing science fiction for too long has led Brin to expect that the future is predictable. The reason 'we' can't see a great wave of technological empowerment that will come out of the new technology is that it isn't here yet. Those sorts of things are only ever obvious in hindsight.
Personally, I'd be far happier for a child of mine to learn programming using an environment like StarLogo, which would teach make them familiar with the fundamental mathematics behind computing - turtles aside logo was actually a fairly powerful Lisp dialect. On the other hand there are more important things that computing, the abstract thinking that reading teaches, the discipline that learning music teaches, the team work that sports teach.
Finally, I'm rather suprised that Brin didn't realise that the easiest way to get a C64 would be to download one of the many open source C64 emulators.
