The charisma machine: The life, death, and legacy of one laptop per child
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The charisma machine: The life, death, and legacy of one laptop per child Morgan G. Ames. 2019. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 328 pp. Infrastructures series. ISBN 978-0-262-53744-5 (pbk) Hany Zayed1
© UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and Springer Nature B.V. 2020
The contemporary educational landscape has been witnessing a proliferation of technological interventions deemed radical, disruptive and transformational. In The Charisma Machine, Morgan Ames tells the story of one of the most prominent yet problematic modern educational technologies: the One Laptop Per Child initiative (OLPC). Founded in 2005 and touted as an educational project, OLPC sought to produce and distribute hard-to-break, low-power laptops fitted with software and content. The laptops were intended both for individual educational change and social change, and were thus offered to country governments in the Global South at low cost. The Charisma Machine examines, complicates and problematises the OLPC project as it was implemented in Paraguay. This book tells a story of the clash between idealistic promises and messy realities, the disconnect between intended and unintended consequences, and the dangers of quasi-divine techno-fetishism and technosolutionism. In its two parts, the book traces the historical origins of OLPC, and explores the usage, impacts and legacy of its machines by following its signature “XO laptop” as well as the people who thought about it, designed it, distributed it and used it. Before beginning her exploration, Ames lays the groundwork by introducing her central analytical anchor: charismatic technologies. Building on theoretical insights from Max Weber, “one of the founders of modern sociology” (p. 8), Ames conceives of a charismatic technology as one which “derives its power experientially and symbolically through the possibility or promise of action” (p. 10). Charismatic technologies tap into existing cultural mythologies, social imaginaries and ideological frameworks to promise a utopian vision, and persist against failed promises, contradictions, counterevidence, uncertainties, opposition and critique. Marked by * Hany Zayed [email protected] 1
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
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Book Review
technological determinism wrapped in a transformatory rhetoric, they eliminate agency and make individual and social change seem natural and inevitable. The first part of the book (chapters 1–2) offers an intellectual and cultural genealogy of OLPC. It examines the ideological scaffolding supporting OLPC and its charisma, and traces the materialisation of those ideas into the XO laptop. Through an analysis of OLPC-related speeches, discussions, publications and talks, in addition to interviews with OLPC contributors and observations of annual OLPC Community Summits, Ames argues that OLPC and its underpinning charisma emerged from and were rooted in the complementary union of constructionism (an education theory espousing the importance of programmable computers –
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