I think that the project failed because it ignored the political aspects of the education system. The $100 laptop was a distraction. A fundamental aspect of the project was to rethink education in relationship with technology.
I suspect 1/100 or 1/500 or some similar number of people will be extraordinary autodidacts and, if you give them sufficient baseline education and an Internet-connected computer, they will get extraordinary results. I've worked on numerous 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) proposals that were supposed to get computers and the Internet in US schools from 2000 onwards. That effort has largely succeeded and not been a panacea.
I'm an "autodidact" programmer so I feel like I should discount myself as an outlier in this discussion, but I'm amazed to see my kids just spending time on their computers at age 4-5. They are learning really complex problem solving in Minecraft, learning to sound out words when searching the inventory for items, and learning a little geometry when trying to predict the right coordinates to teleport to. They learn fluent English with an advanced vocabulary automatically too. I love to watch it and it reminds me of how I engaged with computers as a kid too.
They learn all this stuff independently on YouTube tutorials. I just join in their games and play along and ask for help when I get stuck. Or help them with sysadmin tasks like installing the "mods" they want to try.
So I feel like my kids are living the dream and engaging with computers in a positive way, regardless of whether it improves their grades in school, and to me the purpose of OLPC was to spread this self-directed play-learning opportunity much more widely.
Isn't everybody a bit of an autodidact in the age of YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and forums?
At the time of the program in many areas of Argentina it was rather internet was not really widespread enough.
And when the kids would go in the internet would be either to play Counter-Strike or log into Facebook, that was taking over the world at the time.
> if you give them sufficient baseline education
That didn't happen. I think even 1/500 is too optimist.
Anecdotally, there were some security measures implemented in the netbooks in Argentina that would require periodic re-enabling (So as to prevent kids for quitting school?) and the only "smart" thing I saw coming out of the netbooks was kids finding out how to circumvent those measures (That in this age and time means just googling it)
I suspect 1/100 or 1/500 or some similar number of people will be extraordinary autodidacts and, if you give them sufficient baseline education and an Internet-connected computer, they will get extraordinary results. I've worked on numerous 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) proposals that were supposed to get computers and the Internet in US schools from 2000 onwards. That effort has largely succeeded and not been a panacea.
Today I still ban laptops in class: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract... because they seem to detract from learning, on the net.