A fascinating examination of technological utopianism and its
complicated consequences.
In The Charisma Machine, Morgan Ames chronicles the life and legacy of
the One Laptop per Child project and explains why--despite its
failures--the same utopian visions that inspired OLPC still motivate
other projects trying to use technology to "disrupt" education and
development.
Announced in 2005 by MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte, One
Laptop per Child promised to transform the lives of children across the
Global South with a small, sturdy, and cheap laptop computer, powered by
a hand crank. In reality, the project fell short in many ways--starting
with the hand crank, which never materialized. Yet the project remained
charismatic to many who were captivated by its claims of access to
educational opportunities previously out of reach. Behind its promises,
OLPC, like many technology projects that make similarly grand claims,
had a fundamentally flawed vision of who the computer was made for and
what role technology should play in learning.
Drawing on fifty years of history and a seven-month study of a model
OLPC project in Paraguay, Ames reveals that the laptops were not only
frustrating to use, easy to break, and hard to repair, they were
designed for "technically precocious boys"--idealized younger versions
of the developers themselves--rather than the children who were actually
using them. The Charisma Machine offers a cautionary tale about the
allure of technology hype and the problems that result when utopian
dreams drive technology development.
