The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child

THE CHARISMA MACHINE: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child by Morgan G. Ames. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019. 309 pages including appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. Paperback; $35.00. ISBN: 9780262537445. *"As with many who lead development projects, Negroponte and OLPC's other leaders and contributors wanted to transform the world--not only for what they believed would be for the better but, as we will see, in their own image" (p. 4). *Morgan G. Ames's book, The Charisma Machine, is a deeply incisive analysis of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. The OLPC project, led primarily by Nicholas Negroponte, sought to provide millions of simple, robust, inexpensive laptops to children in developing countries, to allow the children to rise above societal and educational limitations. The author analyzes not only the hardware and software of the OLPC XO laptop, but also delves into the leaders' experiences as "technically precocious boys" and "hackers" at MIT's Media Lab, their educational philosophy of constructionism, and both their personal charisma and that of the XO laptop. *The book appears to be a reworking of the author's PhD dissertation from Stanford University in 2013, and as such, is not an easy read. Understanding the book requires understanding a few oft-used terms, defined in the introduction. Ames repeatedly uses the term "social imaginary" defined as "a set of coherent visions by a group of people to collectively 'imagine their social existence,' as philosopher Charles Taylor puts it--the ways that people imagine themselves as part of a group and the identities that this group takes on in their minds" (p.¬†6). *The book also emphasizes the leaders' common life experiences as technically precocious boys--boys who grew up taking apart devices to understand them and then rebuilding them to make them better. Their experiences continued in the group at MIT's Media Lab, where members would play with computers to learn how they worked and then would challenge each other to reprogram them and extend their capabilities. These individuals generally had been unhappy being educated at "factory schools," and thus they believed that all children could better educate themselves by being given unsupervised access to laptops. They believed in extreme educational constructionism: children learned best by unrestricted and unguided play, and if given the opportunity by being given a laptop, they would learn to program, would learn English, and would learn how to diagnose and fix hardware problems, all without supervision. *Finally, the term "charisma" is crucial. "Charisma is not legitimized through bureaucratic or rational means but by followers' belief that a leader has extraordinary, even divine, powers that are not available to ordinary people" (p. 8). Negroponte and others were charismatic individuals, making claims about OLPC (and education and society) that others, then, simply accepted as true. *The XO laptop itself, Ames claims, was a charismatic machine. It was a small, inexpensive, colorful laptop, running open-source software, and touted as tough and reliable. In reality, the hardware suffered from many problems: poor battery performance, insufficient memory, fragile wireless antennae, a flaky keyboard and trackpad, and a screen that cracked easily. The software provided by the operating system was supposedly easy to learn and use, and included educational tools (Scratch, Tux Paint, etc.) and an internet browser. Most programs used English in their instructions; the assumption was that children in non-English-speaking regions needed to and would learn English by using the programs, and thus they would become fluent in the "universal language" of technology and industry. *Chapter 1, "OLPC's Charismatic Roots," seeks to answer the question, "Why did so many so enthusiastically accept OLPC's charismatic promises?" The chapter provides a foundation for the rest of the book, going over the histories of Negroponte, and more importantly, Seymour Papert, who first conceived of the XO laptop. Papert was a technological utopian, believing that technology had the power to lift people out of poverty, fix education (by disrupting the status quo), overthrow corrupt governments, and so on. Papert's life experiences and writings (Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas) provided the foundation for OLPC. *Chapter 2, "Making the Charisma Machine," describes the OLPC hardware and software, and the five principles of OLPC: child ownership, low ages (targeted toward children ages 6-12), saturation ("where every child will own a laptop"), connection (to the Internet), and free and open software. Of these five, saturation and connection ended up proving to be the most difficult. Saturation was never achieved because the laptop hardware was so fragile that many children who were given a laptop, broke it, and they were then never able to use it again. Connection proved to be difficult. Initially the laptop was going to implement a new networking technology which would allow laptops to seamlessly find and connect to one another, forming an ad hoc network across a town. This technology was never fully realized, and so connectivity was possible only if the government or a nongovernmental organization (NGO) installed wireless hotspots at schools. *In chapters 3 and 4, Ames recounts what she observed in Paraguay over a seven-month period. OLPC deployed the XO laptop in Paraguay, especially in one city, Caacup√©, with the help of an NGO called Paraguay Educa. Ames recalls seeing hundreds of broken laptops stacked in a backroom at Paraguay Educa, notes how children used the still-working laptops (primarily to download games and music), and how already overworked teachers had little time to incorporate this new disruptive technology into their lesson plans. Success was achieved only in a few schools where Paraguay Educa hired technology formadores, or trainers, to be placed to help maintain and promote the laptops. Money for paying these formadores quickly ran out, however. She found and interviewed a few children who had taught themselves to program using Scratch or Turtle Art. In all cases, these children had guardians who closely monitored the children's use of the laptops, and encouraged them to create content instead of just consuming it. In other words, these children did not, without supervision and outside encouragement, learn programming, learn English, and learn how to repair their own laptops. *Chapter 6 is a fascinating chapter that examines the role of performance in the success of NGOs and nonprofits. Most organizations sponsored by outside funding sources must periodically demonstrate the effectiveness of their work to their sponsors. Paraguay Educa was no exception, having to demonstrate to visiting leaders of OLPC how well their vision was being realized. These dog-and-pony shows made the OLPC leadership believe that everything in Paraguay was going well. These demonstrations were necessary for the employees of Paraguay Educa to keep their jobs. The OLPC leadership were also not interested in digging too deeply to discover any problems, as they also had to report back to their donors. Ames analyzes this system of accountability based on performances, noting its advantages and disadvantages. *The final concluding chapter summarizes the five main takeaways of the book: *Big cookie-cutter solutions to problems without thorough research and sustained honest analysis "in the field" are probably doomed to fail. *When developing a project, don't underestimate the hard realities of the culture where the project is to be deployed. *Be cognizant of the privilege of those proposing a solution, and how others may not have this privilege. *Don't be fooled by performances. *Inspect the undergirdings of your philosophies. Are they legitimate? *OLPC failed on all of these points. Millions of dollars were spent, and there is little evidence of any lasting impact. *Although it is not an easy read, this book is recommended for those who are interested in thinking about how computing can be effectively used to make a difference in this world. If you are a Christian, and desire to be an active agent of change for good, you also should spend time considering your privilege, the culture of where your project will be deployed, and why you are optimistic about the success and impact of your project. Will you be making the same mistakes that OLPC made? *Reviewed by Victor Norman, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, MI 49546.