Charisma Machine

The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child

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Morgan G. Ames: Charisma Machine (2019, MIT Press)

328 pages

English language

Published Jan. 18, 2019 by MIT Press.

ISBN:
978-0-262-35389-2
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5 stars (2 reviews)

3 editions

Must read for CS people

4 stars

Two prominent subcultures within computer science academe and practice are "Free and Open Source Software" and "Startup Culture". This book made me think (uncomfortably) about the connections and commonalities of the two. Some of the most cringe-worthy moments from tech people come from someone thinking that a certain amount of skill at e.g. computer programming makes them an expert in a completely unrelated topic. This is a kind of anti-intellectualism; maybe it is sometimes needed, but it seems more often harmful than helpful.

From Man-boy Dreams to Broken Screens

5 stars

This book was a surprise to me. I knew very little about the "One Laptop Per Child" programme, and never really set out to learn more. I also did not expect a book about such a niche topic to be interesting enough for a duration. But Morgan G. Ames' brilliant critical analysis is about far more than that programme. It is about techno-utopic dreams and how they get inflated by the charisma of those who come up with them. OLPC was the brainchild of some of the founding members of the MIT Media Lab, and was put forward as a scheme that would empower poor children into becoming keen technologists in the future.

Ames' anthropological writing is sharp and often funny, her analysis is bulletproof, and her conclusions are damning. The programme was a complete failure: The machines were expensive, prone to breaking, under-used, poorly designed for purpose and unpopular …