OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world

The real reason why OLPC failed is that children in downtrodden countries don't need a laptop. They need food, a healthy environment, good old fashioned classroom education and plenty of pens and notebooks. A laptop is the worst tool you can use for studying.

I went through my entire school and undergraduate college without once bringing my laptop into the classroom. My mother and father learned to program in FORTRAN using nothing but pen, paper and the occasional slide rule.

Paper books, decent sized notebooks and ballpoint pens. Spend $100 on that. That will actually help. This whole project was solving a first world problem in the third world.

> A laptop is the worst tool you can use for studying.

A laptop is a great tool for studying. Word Processing makes editing papers much easier than the old markup and rewrite method. The web makes researching topics and cross referencing documents much easier. Nothing beats actually running code for learning how to program.

If I was going to spend $100/yr on educational supplies for a student I wouldn't spend it on a laptop. Pencils, notebooks, and textbooks are more important. If I was going to spend $1000/yr on educational supplies for a student I 100% would include a computer.

Technology is a distraction in the classroom. I regret even the minimal presence of technology when I was in school, aside from computer science 'lab' work.

What about for people like me and very likely many here...

The classroom was one of the biggest distractions to learning I faced. Early access to a computer was not only the foundation of my productive education, I don't exaggerate when I say it may have saved my life.