It did change the world. The OLPC project launched the netbook industry - before OLPC, cheap laptops cost ~$1000, afterwards you could get them for $400. Now

It did change the world. The OLPC project launched the netbook industry - before OLPC, cheap laptops cost ~$1000, afterwards you could get them for $400. Now you can get cheap netbooks/tablets with a lot more functionality than the XO for under $100. It's just that it's not specifically the OLPC's laptop that changed the world. I think that what went wrong was a complete ignorance of market mechanisms. Visionary head of a non-profit organism says he's going to benefit humanity by providing cheap computers for kids in the developing world. He's right about the supply chain, and completely wrong about the market, and the response of the other players. I remember when the OLPC came out there were reports that the first thing recipients were doing was going on E-Bay to sell the computer they'd just received and buy food. OLPC tried to quash the secondary market with the "buy one, give one" program. They succeeded in creating a Western market for cheap notebooks. Other manufacturers (Asus, etc.) succeeded in delivering better machines for that market, which is unsurprising given their manufacturing expertise. Once those better machines existed, the initial target market bought them instead. They succeeded in breaking the cartel that was keeping laptop prices > $1000, which I've got to give them credit for. Much of the rest of the story is just hubris in thinking they could deliver a better machine than companies that had spent decades optimizing their manufacturing and quality control processes. (There is perhaps a similar story in Tesla, which succeeded in getting everybody to pay attention to electric cars, but will likely fail to maintain its position within the changed market.)