I’m at the Palazzo Ballroom in the Venetian/Palazzo Hotels in Las Vegas where Intel (INTC) chair Craig Barrett is talking a whole bunch about the developing world. He’s probably not going to talk much about the company’s “Atom” microprocessor for netbooks, or about any other chip stuff.

“There are more Internet users in China than there are people in the U.S.,” Barrett notes, “And more cellphone users in South Africa than in the U.S.” But it won’t matter, he says, if the world doesn’t address inequities, starting with education. “If someone asked me what’s the most important technology you could put in the classroom, I would say, a really good teacher,” says Barrett. He brings onstage executives from NetHope, which is coordinating IT for developing countries, including Kenya, and Save the Children, which is working on getting Intel Classmate PCs into classrooms in Bangladesh.

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