I'm surprised you say "co-opted" for a couple of reasons.
1) I thought the intent of "learning tool" was teaching novices how to program in Python. This has huge ramifications in developing countries. In a mid to high income family in the US, it isn't clear if the raspberry Pi is the right computer to give to a child in order to teach them basic programming.
2) The hacker community's exploration is not devoid of learning. I'm a software guy and I've learned a great deal about hardware due to the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. I don't think this overshadows the teaching aspects in any way.
1) I thought the intent of "learning tool" was teaching novices how to program in Python. This has huge ramifications in developing countries. In a mid to high income family in the US, it isn't clear if the raspberry Pi is the right computer to give to a child in order to teach them basic programming.
2) The hacker community's exploration is not devoid of learning. I'm a software guy and I've learned a great deal about hardware due to the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. I don't think this overshadows the teaching aspects in any way.