[nnq]

> went in with a constructionist perspective and it didn't work out

I have no knowledge of OLPC, but it seems obvious to me: successfull autodidacts in societies where self-directed-learning is not commont (probably most societies...) tend to be internally motivated, so higher proportion of them are introverts, also higher proportions have at least little bit of aspergers-like traits etc. Extroverts on the other hand tend to learn most from human teachers they physically interact with!

If you'd crunch the numbers and compare them with the personality traits of "influencers", you'll likely see they are opposite. So any chance that a positive view of the device will spread via word of mouth is low, aka any change of whatever the equivalent of "going viral" would be amongst African villages is low!

By targeting the self-learners you're basically going anti-viral... you're doing anti-marketing! You'd need to try and hit the "micro-influencers", and probably only chance of that is by hitting teachers and some community leaders and local "celebrities".

We techo-focused hyper-individualistic self-learners only thrive in societies after they've been properly wired up both socially and technically. Drop us in a borderline-medieval society and we're useless and have zero influence on the people around us. Heck, "geeks" started to thrive in medieval Europe after the church managed in a primitive way to network part of the world. Probably similar patterns happened in China and the Arab world too. Most underdeveloped societies today totally lack that kind of useful networking ...otherwise they likely wouldn't be underdeveloped in the first place!

[tudelo]

internal motivation == introvert == aspergers? got some stats on that?

[nnq]

no == there, not that strong of a claim, just "if [A], then more likely [B] than without prior [A]" ...if you have endless time (or a few PhD students you can task to research literature for free) and patience search for studies about "associations between [A] and [B]" dig and dig through things.

I avoid making a stronger claims bc it would require too much work to research it, do it yourself if you want do (dis)confirm, I'm just "throwing a bone here", too lazy to think or research more about it :)...

[tudelo]

Ahh, so you are making these claims because you think they are true. You presented them as some sort of fact by stating that this is obvious to you. I just don't really get why it was relevant to lay out that chain of relevance. I don't see the obvious connection between self motivated and introvert, but I guess it could be possible. The other connections just seem like random thoughts. I was trying to figure out why something so obvious to you doesn't explain itself when presented without evidence...