“There's a set of people who believe that everyone on earth is one ChatGPT login away from being the best versions of themselves. And it's like, buddies, that's not how this works. And it wasn't how it worked then either.”
Version History · September 2026
Closing out an episode on One Laptop Per Child's XO-1, the $100 machine that was going to educate the world's children and instead wound down around 2014. Pierce is naming the belief he thinks doomed it: that technology is good by definition, and that handing people computers lets them solve their own problems. Adi Robertson pushes back in the next turn, arguing OLPC's version of that belief at least wasn't a commercial land grab.
Transcript
…really ask the countries if that's what they want. Like that quote about we don't even have chairs. A lot of the time, just giving people money or like getting people to be able to make their own decisions, but with more resources is better than we're shoving our techno-futurism down your throat.
…commercial purposes, even if it turned out a bunch of people just wanted to access YouTube on them. So so it goes. That is true. But like, I think this is just in a lot of ways a far more value, less pernicious product than a lot of the companies that we're talking about would end up being. That's
so true. I think the middle of those two things that I think I have found myself in is that sort of inherent belief that technology is universally, unilaterally by definition, a good thing. And there was just this sense that if we just give them all computers, they'll solve all their own problems for them. And I think that is, that's just the part of like the that particular ethos of Silicon Valley, particularly at that time. And frankly, like we're going through this right now with AI too. Like there, there's a set of people who believe that we are one, everyone on earth is one chat GPT login away from being the best versions of themselves. And it's like, buddies, like that's not how this works. And it wasn't how it worked then either, but there was a real earnest belief that it was. And I think. I got to say,
I don't know. I think at least the belief that the belief wasn't at the starting point, we are going to give a giant company control over your life, which is basically what Chat GPT is. Like, it cannot be overstated that while you can think it's really dumb, the idea was we're going to teach kids…
Yeah, I think that's fair. But I think you're right. And I hadn't really thought about that until you say it. But there is really nothing evil inside of this little device. Like, I think, I think Nicholas Negroponte was out over his skis in incredible ways. I think he both sold and doomed the…
Yeah, I think kind of the worst thing you can say about this is that they failed or that they were in some ways fundamentally misguided about education is an argument that a lot of people made. But I think that, yeah, I feel like this was not malicious. Yeah,
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