| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago |
| The tens of millions per year spent on OLPC could have been better applied to programs that have demonstrated tangible positive impact on human capital development in developing countries, such as free meal programs [0], early childhood developmental screening [1], and other evidence-based policies. Heck, most policymakers in LDCs panned the program at the time as well not actually prioritizing the aid that was needed [2] [0] - https://econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Bonds.pdf [1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5859813/ [2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20170210165101/http://edition.cn... |
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| ▲ | mmooss a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Those effective strategies were developed through the same method of research and development as OLPC. At one point, we didn't know about those benefits; should we have not experimented with those strategies? The nature of research is that some things succeed/fail to different degrees than others, and some that have not sufficiently succeeded will in the future, or will inform other successes. If we already knew the answers, it wouldn't be research. |
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| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent [-] | | The issue was there was no robust quantitative research done before OLPC was created. The programs I gave as examples above all had previously been tested in control groups via RCT before they were rolled out en masse. On top of that, these initiatives were done in coordination with local stakeholders. This is why JPAL@MIT [0] (Banerjee, Duflo) and REAP@Stanford [1] (Liu, Wang, Rozelle) have had significant success in helping raise HDIs in the states in India and China respectively that they worked with. On top of that, OLPC (and similar initiatives) took a significant amount of oxygen from the philanthropy ecosystem, with programs and initiatives that had a better strike rate being looked over simply because "it's Negreponte". Even Negreponte's MIT Media Lab largely failed from an outcomes perspective, and was buoyed becuase of donor relations. [0] - https://www.povertyactionlab.org/ [1] - https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/reap | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | These are great points; thanks. > done in coordination with local stakeholders That reminds me of my first impression of OLPC when I first read about it - a typical patronizing rich-world kind of aid, 'let them eat cake'. |
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| ▲ | lurk2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Heck, most policymakers in LDCs panned the program at the time as well not actually prioritizing the aid that was needed [2] I don’t have any insight as to what sort of aid would have been more effective, but quite frankly some of the criticisms were ridiculous when you consider the majority of people in these countries had a cheap mobile phone in their pocket a decade later. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/10/09/majorities-in-... |
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| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent [-] | | A smartphone allows you to both use the Internet and make calls. OLPC only let you use a computer without internet in a number of areas where broadband and cellphone penetration was nonexistent until the 2010s expansion because of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indian commodity telecom infra. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 a day ago | parent [-] | | The main draw of these devices does appear to be telecomm; the Pew article is from 2018, so the numbers have probably changed by now, but back then the majority of users were using dumbphones. I can remember watching videos as early as 2014 showing nomadic tribesmen in Africa using flip phones for mobile payments. I was under the impression that these devices were Wi-Fi enabled; I take your point that penetration rates for broadband were nowhere near as high back then, but I still think a lot of the criticisms were misplaced. The penetration of telecomm into these countries is going to have massive upside in the next two decades, and computer literacy plays a part in that. I suspect there are compounding network effects involved here that don’t really exist for linear problems like healthcare (though I could just be underestimating the immediate benefit of $1 in medicine vs. $1 in digital literacy). | | |
| ▲ | alephnerd 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I can remember watching videos as early as 2014 showing nomadic tribesmen in Africa using flip phones for mobile payments Yet internet penetration in Kenya was only 43% [0]. Additionally, countries with significantly higher HDIs (ie. Significantly higher developmental indicators) like Thailand had lower internet penetration in 2014. Internet penetration was extremely useful in building out infra, but it was just one piece of various other pieces of social infrastructure needed to build human capital. > The penetration of telecomm into these countries is going to have massive upside in the next two decades, and computer literacy plays a part in that Most households in developing countries don't have computers [1], so assuming internet penetration implies computer literacy is a fallacy, as most households globally instead use a cellphone as their primary computing device [2]. This is one of the reasons why OLPC failed. Steve Jobs was correct that the smartphone user experience is the best experience for non-technical users. The organization would have realized this if they tested their hypothesis first, but they didn't. Even Bill Gates called them out for this when they were trying to fundraise in the early 2000s [3] [0] - https://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/... [1] - https://datahub.itu.int/data/?e=AGO&i=12046 [2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?most_rec... [3] - https://www.cio.com/article/254451/consumer-technology-bill-... | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | > so assuming internet penetration implies computer literacy is a fallacy, as most households globally instead use a cellphone as their primary computing device I was using computer literacy as a stand-in for technical literacy. > Steve Jobs was correct that the smartphone user experience is the best experience for non-technical users. We’re speaking about this in retrospect; mass-market smartphones were still in their infancy when the project launched. > Even Bill Gates called them out for this when they were trying to fundraise in the early 2000s Gates doesn’t mention anything about smartphones in this article. |
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| ▲ | jazzyjackson a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Bit like the argument that we shouldn't have gone to the moon |
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| ▲ | tvshtr a day ago | parent [-] | | Not a bit like, exactly like. It's a false dichotomy. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 a day ago | parent [-] | | It’s not a false dichotomy at all. There is a finite set of resources that can be deployed at any given time. $1 spent on a laptop is $1 that isn’t going to medicine. This usually a curve rather than a straight line (so usually you’re better off with some combination of both), but this doesn’t really apply to a situation where your limiting factor is dollars rather than the factors of production. | | |
| ▲ | tvshtr 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You're building your arguments on a false premise, that ALL resources are distributed from some magical mutually exclusive abstract bucket. While it's true when applied to some slices of reality (be it on micro or macro levels) it isn't true in general, where it's parallelized, distributed, discrete and largely independent instead.
Doing it your way would inherently lead to socio-cultural diversity collapse.
Which is what's actually happening currently, not due to failure of distribution, but due to resources being siphoned and accumulated by hostile entities. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You're building your arguments on a false premise, that ALL resources are distributed from some magical mutually exclusive abstract bucket. There is nothing magical about the idea that a resource used for one thing is unavailable to be used for another thing. > it isn't true in general, where it's parallelized, distributed, discrete and largely independent instead. Can you provide any concrete example of where the premise does not hold true? |
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| ▲ | jazzyjackson a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | There actually isn't a finite set of resources when we're talking about human capital. Motivation and inspiration and incentive come into play, and as it happens different people are inspired to work on different things. | | |
| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > There actually isn't a finite set of resources when we're talking about human capital Ever heard of something called a budget? Teachers, aid workers, doctors, and others need to get paid. Their suppliers need to get paid. Infrastructure needs to be built. All of that costs money. | | |
| ▲ | jazzyjackson a day ago | parent [-] | | So what, there's only so much money? Or does money represent the amount of work people are willing to do? My point is simply that the amount of productivity a given population can exercise is not bound to the amount of money in circulation. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 a day ago | parent [-] | | > My point is simply that the amount of productivity a given population can exercise is not bound to the amount of money in circulation. It is bound by other constraints. |
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| ▲ | lurk2 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > There actually isn't a finite set of resources when we're talking about human capital. Wrong. |
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| ▲ | fragmede a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| That has an Effective Altruism feel to it though, which is unfortunately tainted due to SBF's involvement and other drama surrounding it. |
