> 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.

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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).

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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.