In the first episode of With Intent, Kristin Gecan talks to Morgan Ames, author of The Charisma Machine, about One Laptop Per Child—a hugely ambitious, or as Morgan defines it, charismatic—project with good intentions: to bring a laptop to every child in the developing world.

We talk about why that project failed, how it connects to utopianism, and what design might learn from it all. 

Morgan is a 2021 Latham fellow at the Institute of Design.

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.