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"The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child"
Start Date: 11/9/2020Start Time: 12:00 PM
End Date: 11/9/2020End Time: 1:30 PM

Event Description
CDCS Workshop: Morgan G. Ames, University of California, Berkeley
"The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child"

***Click here to RSVP. (link is external) A link to the virtual event will be sent to those who RSVP.***

About the Talk
In this talk, Morgan G. Ames will discuss her book The Charisma Machine, which 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 enchanted 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 a seven-month study of a model OLPC project in Paraguay, this book 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 diverse range of children who might actually use them. Reaching fifty years into the past and across the globe, The Charisma Machine offers a cautionary tale about the allure of technology hype and the problems that result when utopian dreams drive technology development.

This talk is cosponsored by the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the Annenberg School and the Department of Information Science at Drexel University's College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) at Drexel University.

About the Speaker
Morgan G. Ames is an assistant adjunct professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches in Data Science and administers the Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies in affiliation with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society. She is also affiliated with the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Working Group, the Center for Science, Technology, Society and Policy, and the Berkeley Institute of Data Science.
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Online
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