Remembering the OLPC
A few years back I bought a YouTube subscription and it totally transformed my video consumption habits, realizing my fear of spending more time on my phone, something I'd been trying to get a handle of. Which is not to say that I can go back to sitting through commercials, that bane of modern life. Now, instead of listening to podcasts, I listen to YouTube videos, whether in the background of washing dishes or while farming monsters in Path of Exile 2; I'm exposed to more media than ever, for better or worse. My daily journey along the YT algorithm can go to some interesting places, and the other day I encountered one such place: Why Western Designs Fail in Developing Countries , a video discussing the problems with the OLPC or "One Laptop Per Child" campaign/device, an initiative I myself funded some seventeen years ago. The "interesting" part to me is having the failure spelled out, precisely and incontrovertibly, a lesson I hope that is heeded by all s...