The frugal engineering world is littered with many similar disasters, from the $100 laptop to educate the world (which actually costs $200 and has been shown to have no impact on what children actually learn),87 to cleaner cookstoves that nobody wanted,88 to various water-filter technologies89 and innovative latrines.90 A lot of the problem seems to be that these innovations take place in a void, insufficiently connected to the lives they wish to change. The core ideas are often clever, and it remains possible that one day they will click, but it is hard to place a lot of faith in this
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