The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child (Infrastructures) By Morgan G. Ames

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Books,Education & Teaching,Schools & Teaching The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child (Infrastructures) Morgan G. Ames

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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.

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I remember the OLPC project. I followed news of it in the late 2000s and could get behind the idea; create a $100 laptop and give it to poor kids across the Global South and encourage them to learn to program. I loved the idea, because I had the same upbringing as the OLPC promoters who loved the idea. I was one of those kids who taught themselves how to program, making little video games in the BASIC programming language. This interest led me to major in computer science and then on to a successful career in Silicon Valley. So I thought these kids would teach themselves to program, express their creativity in code, develop a curiosity and an internal motivation to learn, become highly paid software engineers and tech entrepreneurs and Make The World A Better Place TM.OLPC is a classic story of Silicon Valley hubris by way of MIT's famed Media Lab, but Ames does a fantastic job of dissecting the missteps, grand delusions, and false presumptions that went into constructing this fiasco. This is a book for several audiences: educators, policy makers, social workers, or even just jaded techies like me who gasp with relief that someone else has pulled back the curtain on these so-called wizards.Ames uses the term "technically precocious boy" to identify the archetype that many in the OLPC project would identify with and, consciously or not, identify their targeted laptop-recipients as. I certainly was one of these "gifted" boys (and they were overwhelmingly boys) who taught himself to program at a young age by making little video games. I was independent, had a curiosity to learn outside of school, and had general anti-authority streak. Or at least I liked to think I did. Like the members behind OLPC, I was rather blind to the privileges I had: growing up with a PC and even internet access in the 90s and parents who encouraged my computing interest.So I am especially primed to fall under the charisma of the One Laptop Per Child's cheap XO laptops. All these poor kids need is a laptop, and they'll follow the same path that I did and have successful careers and bring economic prosperity to their home countries and the world at large, right? Socioeconomic problems like poverty and lack of opportunity are hard; a quick, cheap technical fix can seem like a miracle. If that sounds too good to be true, it's because it is.Not that the OLPC was a scam, but it did have some cult-like features. The charisma of the backers such as Nicholas Negroponte, who also had the connections to bring in funding and code contributions from open source volunteers, was overwhelming. The input of actual teachers, social workers, and local community organizers was glossed over, as was tracking the actual effectiveness of the program.Ames spent months in Paraguay in the actual communities that were recipients of OLPC laptops, cataloguing the experience of students and teachers. She also saw firsthand the many shortcomings of these laptops. Some of these were simple: classrooms often didn't have enough electric outlets or power strips to sustain everyone's laptop. But some were large: kids mainly used the laptops, not for creative expression, but just to consume media on the internet. They more often played video games than programmed them.I lived in Silicon Valley for over a decade and I've personally seen the strain of naivety of these tech-based utopian vision. Some guy will claim that he's going to teach JavaScript to homeless people and solve poverty. They never have any previous experience in education or social work, but this doesn't matter. After a few weeks, they, and the internet audience enrapture by their first blog post announcement, lose interest and quietly move on to their next venture. The One Laptop Per Child project was this, scaled up into millions of dollars spent by project funders and recipient governments, along with the countless time of open source volunteers, local teachers, parents, and the students themselves. In the end, the time and money would have been better spent on more conventional, but not-so-charismatic, educational programs.Ames' The Charisma Project is a cautionary tale that is important to read for anyone who follows developments in the tech industry. These institutions and companies frequently make grand claims of innovation and salvation. I, for one, appreciate Ames' efforts to expose these hollow proclamations and her guidance on how to avoid repeating their mistakes in the future.

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