Morgan G. Ames (Author)
The MIT Press
Publication date: 2019
Language: English
Edition Details: Book Series: Infrastructures series
Physical Details: 328
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.
...MoreReview Daniel Lövheim (2023) Review of "The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child". Technology and Culture (pp. 608-609).
Similar Citations
Chapter
Morgan G. Ames;
(2014)
Translating Magic: The Charisma of One Laptop per Child’s XO Laptop in Paraguay
Article
Jérémie LeClerc;
(2024)
Gaming in the Dark: Colossal Cave Adventure, Kentucky Route Zero, and the Racial Imaginary of the Mammoth Cave System
Book
Molly Wright Steenson;
(2017)
Architectural intelligence: How designers and architects created the digital landscape
Article
Baraniuk, Richard G.;
(Summer 2013)
Opening Education
Article
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan;
(2015)
Toward Liberal Histories of Computing: Fred Turner, The Democratic Surround
Book
Alexander Galloway;
(2021)
Uncomputable: Play and Politics In the Long Digital Age
Book
Audrey Watters;
(2021)
Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning
Article
C. J. Kirsch;
(2020)
A Three-Person Teaching Machine Designed for Crisis: The Geromat III in Berlin and Ulm
Article
Tatnall, Arthur;
(2013)
The Australian Educational Computer That Never Was
Article
Anderson, David Leech;
(2008)
Humans Using Machines, Humans as Machines: Implications for Teaching and Learning
Article
R. Crooks;
(2018)
Critical Failure: Computer-Aided Instruction and the Fantasy of Information
Article
Waltz, Scott B.;
(2003)
Everything Old Is New Again: Technology and the Mistaken Future
Chapter
Lajos Somogyvári;
Máté Szabó;
Gábor Képes;
(2023)
How Computers Entered the Classroom in Hungary: A Long Journey from the Late 1950s into the 1980s
Chapter
Katrina Elizabete Purina-Bieza;
Iveta Kestere;
(2023)
Computers in the Classrooms of an Authoritarian Country: The Case of Soviet Latvia (1980s–1991)
Chapter
Geiss, Michael;
Carmen Flury;
(2023)
Computers in Europe’s Classrooms: An Introduction
Chapter
Clémence Cardon-Quint;
(2023)
Informatique pour tous, France 1985: Pedagogy, Industry and Politics
Chapter
Rosalía Guerrero Cantarell;
(2023)
Teachers Translating and Circumventing the Computer in Lower and Upper Secondary Swedish Schools in the 1970s and 1980s
Book
Carmen Flury;
Geiss, Michael;
(2023)
How computers entered the classroom, 1960-2000: historical perspectives
Book
Kregg Hetherington;
(2020)
The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops
Chapter
Klanovicz, Jó;
(2022)
Between Brazil and Paraguay: An Envirotech History of Global Soybean Farming
Be the first to comment!