7 ms·

I'm a bit skeptical of the thesis of this book. Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it

I'm a bit skeptical of the thesis of this book. Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. We can -- and should -- diagnose and learn from everything which went wrong. The name -- Charisma Machine -- is fair. It describes what's wrong with a lot of modern MIT: big names, big charisma, and marketing over substance. On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M/year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions. If it kinda-worked, the gains would still be high. I gave it maybe 5% odds, and I think that's fair for this type of project.

patcon 5y ago
Agree. And who learns from failure is sometimes important too. Sometimes a project is the same old failure that has happened a 1000 times, and is otherwise owed condemnation as forseeable, but if a NEW class of person/org is getting that learning, then it can change their future trajectories in meaningful ways. I don't know what sort of org OLPC was, but perhaps it was uniquely valuable that these people to fail and learn. Or maybe it was stupid :) I'm just agreeing it's often more complicated to understand than it first appears (The above applies to individual people, but also to organizations. For e.g., maybe non-profits or governments taking their first babysteps into failures of a certain sort, is valuable in the way its not to savvy startup communities who perhaps already know to avoid certain things)
coldtea 5y ago
>Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. No, but it can very well mean it wasn't worth trying this way - and this might have even been evident from the start not just in hindsight (see a top comment above from someone involved in the project).
wmf 5y ago
I started reading the book and part of the thesis is that nothing was learned at the time and the industry is repeating similar mistakes.
- blip54321 5y ago
  Perhaps. I think the core reasons why OLPC failed include: 1) Bad people. By bad, I don't just mean "incompetent." I mean sleazeballs in it for themselves. That's not everyone on the project, but folks like Nicholas Negroponte. 2) Bad risk management. OLPC tried to reinvent everything, down to the display technology. If you take a dozen major risks like that, only one has to fail for the project to fail. I don't think it got far enough to reveal any fundamental reasons why it had to fail. It was a lot of bad execution. I don't mind repeating similar mistakes if we go further next time.
e4e78a06 5y ago
The free market and the march of technological progress did a better job than any moonshot project designed to solve digital literacy in poor countries. Many sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries have better LTE rollout than rural America does. Everyone has a smartphone or tablet, made possible by the fact that cheap Android devices are really cheap but still effective. And that's because the free market doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of committee members who all want a say in how the device is designed. It doesn't have the luxury of endless nonprofit grants. Devices either fulfill needs and make money or they don't and company goes broke. Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.
- scroot 5y ago
  > Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need. True enough. But can we seriously call such activity "digital literacy"? What is "literate" about it?
- sdenton4 5y ago
  I actually think the OLPC was a big step in making computers more accessible. Netbooks were entirely a response to the OLPC, when companies like Asus noticed that there was a gaping, totally unserved market for low-end notebooks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC These netbooks (and especially imitators running Windows that came soon after the eeepc) were very commonplace - especially amongst university students - when I was living in East Africa in the early 2010's. They were, as you say, really cheap and effective enough. Eventually phones have caught up for many use cases, but they certainly weren't there at the time...
  - e4e78a06 5y ago
    Their market penetration for the general population definitely wasn't great though. A big reason IMO was they didn't have a cellular data connection and cell infra hadn't yet been sufficiently developed with good speed and coverage. 2G/3G pretty much universally sucked even in its later forms. Also speaking as someone who used netbooks throughout my time in K-12 ed, they were woefully underpowered and laggy compared to today's low end smartphones. A $80 Xiaomi phone can probably run most websites/apps at 60 fps, a 11 inch netbook with crappy internal HDD/EMMC and single core Atom, not so much.
musicale 5y ago
> On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M/year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions. The risk-reward calculation is important here. Arguably simply spurring interest in developing and using cheap netbook easily paid off the investment in the project in terms of benefit to the world.
disqard 5y ago
Read Todd Oppenheimer's "The Flickering Mind" and you'll find this false mantra (new technology alone will magically solve a deeply human problem) being repeated throughout the history of education technology.
gadders 5y ago
From what I have gathered MIT Media Lab != MIT. The Media Lab is commonly referred to as the Remedial Lab on campus. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20944282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20944282
- blip54321 5y ago
  Was. Past tense. This was definitely the case around the year 2000 (and during most of OLPC). The Media Lab has mostly stayed constant. The rest of MIT ramped up hype, marketing, branding, form-over-substance, and occasionally, corruption. Today, the Media Lab is one of the higher-integrity parts of the Institute, not by virtue of improving, but by virtue of the rest of the Institute slipping.
  - gadders 5y ago
    Well that sucks.

patcon 5y ago

Agree. And who learns from failure is sometimes important too. Sometimes a project is the same old failure that has happened a 1000 times, and is otherwise owed condemnation as forseeable, but if a NEW class of person/org is getting that learning, then it can change their future trajectories in meaningful ways. I don't know what sort of org OLPC was, but perhaps it was uniquely valuable that these people to fail and learn. Or maybe it was stupid :) I'm just agreeing it's often more complicated to understand than it first appears (The above applies to individual people, but also to organizations. For e.g., maybe non-profits or governments taking their first babysteps into failures of a certain sort, is valuable in the way its not to savvy startup communities who perhaps already know to avoid certain things)

coldtea 5y ago

>Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. No, but it can very well mean it wasn't worth trying this way - and this might have even been evident from the start not just in hindsight (see a top comment above from someone involved in the project).

wmf 5y ago

I started reading the book and part of the thesis is that nothing was learned at the time and the industry is repeating similar mistakes.

blip54321 5y ago
Perhaps. I think the core reasons why OLPC failed include: 1) Bad people. By bad, I don't just mean "incompetent." I mean sleazeballs in it for themselves. That's not everyone on the project, but folks like Nicholas Negroponte. 2) Bad risk management. OLPC tried to reinvent everything, down to the display technology. If you take a dozen major risks like that, only one has to fail for the project to fail. I don't think it got far enough to reveal any fundamental reasons why it had to fail. It was a lot of bad execution. I don't mind repeating similar mistakes if we go further next time.

e4e78a06 5y ago

The free market and the march of technological progress did a better job than any moonshot project designed to solve digital literacy in poor countries. Many sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries have better LTE rollout than rural America does. Everyone has a smartphone or tablet, made possible by the fact that cheap Android devices are really cheap but still effective. And that's because the free market doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of committee members who all want a say in how the device is designed. It doesn't have the luxury of endless nonprofit grants. Devices either fulfill needs and make money or they don't and company goes broke. Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.

scroot 5y ago
> Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need. True enough. But can we seriously call such activity "digital literacy"? What is "literate" about it?
sdenton4 5y ago
I actually think the OLPC was a big step in making computers more accessible. Netbooks were entirely a response to the OLPC, when companies like Asus noticed that there was a gaping, totally unserved market for low-end notebooks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC These netbooks (and especially imitators running Windows that came soon after the eeepc) were very commonplace - especially amongst university students - when I was living in East Africa in the early 2010's. They were, as you say, really cheap and effective enough. Eventually phones have caught up for many use cases, but they certainly weren't there at the time...
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  Their market penetration for the general population definitely wasn't great though. A big reason IMO was they didn't have a cellular data connection and cell infra hadn't yet been sufficiently developed with good speed and coverage. 2G/3G pretty much universally sucked even in its later forms. Also speaking as someone who used netbooks throughout my time in K-12 ed, they were woefully underpowered and laggy compared to today's low end smartphones. A $80 Xiaomi phone can probably run most websites/apps at 60 fps, a 11 inch netbook with crappy internal HDD/EMMC and single core Atom, not so much.

musicale 5y ago

> On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M/year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions. The risk-reward calculation is important here. Arguably simply spurring interest in developing and using cheap netbook easily paid off the investment in the project in terms of benefit to the world.

disqard 5y ago

Read Todd Oppenheimer's "The Flickering Mind" and you'll find this false mantra (new technology alone will magically solve a deeply human problem) being repeated throughout the history of education technology.

gadders 5y ago

From what I have gathered MIT Media Lab != MIT. The Media Lab is commonly referred to as the Remedial Lab on campus. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20944282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20944282

blip54321 5y ago
Was. Past tense. This was definitely the case around the year 2000 (and during most of OLPC). The Media Lab has mostly stayed constant. The rest of MIT ramped up hype, marketing, branding, form-over-substance, and occasionally, corruption. Today, the Media Lab is one of the higher-integrity parts of the Institute, not by virtue of improving, but by virtue of the rest of the Institute slipping.
- gadders 5y ago
  Well that sucks.