The Charisma Machine: The life, death, and legacy of One Laptop per Child
I&#x27;m a bit skeptical of the thesis of this book.<p>Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn&#x27;t mean it wasn&#x27;t worth trying.<p>We can -- and should -- diagnose and learn from everything which went wrong. The name -- Charisma Machine -- is fair. It describes what&#x27;s wrong with a lot of modern MIT: big names, big charisma, and marketing over substance.<p>On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M&#x2F;year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions. If it kinda-worked, the gains would still be high. I gave it maybe 5% odds, and I think that&#x27;s fair for this type of project.