This is in response to a manifesto claiming that my book, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child, is colonialist. I welcome critique, though this manifesto mischaracterizes the contents of my book and attacks a straw man, as I explain below. I also find it deeply troubling that this manifesto appears to be originating from, and is certainly wholly publicized by, a white man tenured at an Ivy League American University. I would very much like to hear from others about this, either using the comment feature on this Google Doc or by other means (email, Twitter, etc.).
Claim: "“The Charisma Machine” examines one country at a specific stage of its deployment as its primary data source, ignoring other countries in Latin America with vastly different outcomes that directly counter the book’s main findings."
It’s the nature of ethnographies to be situated in the place where fieldwork is done, and I am very up-front about when and where I did fieldwork, how I was situated in the site, and the limitations of the research. This project was not meant to be a comparative study. It documented a small but well-regarded project in Paraguay (that with 10,000 laptops was not, as the author(s) of the manifesto claims, on the scale of a “pilot”). This drew on six months of fieldwork in 2010 and an additional month in 2013 (450 hours of school observations, 144 interviews, plus lots of additional observational time around Caacupé), and some additional data such as surveys and breakage records.
That said, it’s not true that I ignored other countries entirely. In chapter three of the book, I write about how I visited OLPC-enabled schools in Uruguay in August 2009 and October 2010, attended the Ciudadanía Digital conference in Montevideo in November 2010, and cite scholarship that reports on the development and results of this program. I likewise write about how I interviewed several contacts in Peru during a visit there in September 2010 and also cite scholarship that reports on the development and results of that program, including an unofficial movement to translate OLPC’s interface into Quechua and Aymara (see note on p. 246 which discusses Anita Say Chan’s excellent documentation of this) and a claim that solar panels would be distributed (see note on p. 245). I originally planned to do more extensive research in Uruguay and made arrangements with Plan Ciebal contacts I met during a visit to Montevideo in August 2009 to do so, but when I returned in October 2010 I found that those contacts had left the program and that their replacements were not open to having an independent researcher spend time with Plan Ceibal. Thus, I made what school visits I could with contacts I had made outside of Plan Ceibal, and I continued my ethnography in Paraguay. I continued to follow Plan Ceibal’s reports and heard about the project through Paraguay Educa contacts, who frequently collaborated with Plan Ceibal. I returned in 2013 to Paraguay for follow-up work (more on that below) and have stayed in touch with some of my Paraguayan contacts from afar.
Chapter three contrasts Paraguay’s program to the large One Laptop per Child (OLPC) programs in Uruguay (particularly pages 74-80) and Peru (particularly pages 106-108), as well as accounts of programs elsewhere. I’ve also been in touch with people involved in the OLPC project in Nicaragua and elsewhere, though I did not have enough data from this contact to include in the book. And despite what the author(s) of this manifesto asserts, the outcomes I have seen and read about in these other locations were still not “vastly different.” Even though Uruguay’s Plan Ceibal program does have ongoing funding, which I discuss on page 79 of the book, its results are similar to other 1:1 laptop programs rather than being transformative in the ways One Laptop per Child originally promised.
Claim: "The book’s generalizations point to the generation extreme, “attention-grabbing,” shocking findings, rather than nuanced, balanced research."
I’ve presented pieces of this work at more than 40 conferences and more than 50 other venues (universities, NSF workshops, etc.) between 2010 and the present, at least a dozen of these in panels or workshops with scholars from or focused on Latin America. I have also published 15 articles and book chapters on parts of this research that were subject to double-anonymized peer review. The feedback I have received from the many communities that have seen parts of this work, as well as the three anonymized reviewers for the book, has generally praised the rigor, specificity, and nuance of the research. I make most of my publications available on my website when permitted by copyright regimes. I welcome additional follow-up, giving specifics.
Claim: "In criticizing Nicholas Negroponte’s dealings in Latin America, “The Charisma Machine” implicates the regional community of constructionist researchers in these dealings and in Silicon Valley-style edtech. In fact, this community--which includes prominently female researchers and many scholars of color--has been actively fighting privatization of public schools and technological imperialism for decades."
The diversity and goals of this community are great! I think diverse communities of scholars have a much better chance of overcoming entrenched modes of inequality, and much of the research I’ve done - not just on One Laptop per Child, but in other areas as well - is deeply interested in doing the same. I wholeheartedly agree that fighting the privatization of schools and technological imperialism are worthy causes. I also work hard, in this book and elsewhere, to expose the ways that even well-meaning projects like OLPC can perpetuate sexism, racism, and imperialism, and how the values of the open-source and hacker communities based out of MIT that influenced OLPC likewise have elements of sexism, racism, and imperialism that make their way into the designs that these groups produce. I hope we can all work together to make this community, and the technologies they create, more open and welcoming to all.
In The Charisma Machine, my focus is more specifically on One Laptop per Child, not Negroponte’s other “dealings in Latin America” (or elsewhere). While I briefly discuss Negroponte’s and Papert’s previous overseas 1:1 laptop projects in chapter one to provide context on OLPC, they are not the focus of the book. And in fact, Negroponte really isn’t the focus either. Negroponte was hardly involved in any of the on-the-ground operations of any OLPC project, as far as I could tell - he certainly never visited Paraguay and I don’t think he visited other projects in Latin America. Relatedly, the list of academic publications on the manifesto’s website, as well as the linked testimonials, are about classroom technology projects unrelated to OLPC. As wonderful as it would be to do a survey of all such projects across Latin America, that strays far from the purpose of my book, which is to chart the intellectual history of One Laptop per Child (chapters one and two) and OLPC’s reception among kids and their schools and families in Paraguay (chapters three through six).
Claim: "“The Charisma Machine” is based on fieldwork in Latin America but barely cites research from local scholars. The book chooses to portray Latin American scholars and teachers as defenseless, implying that the continent bowed down to Nicholas Negroponte’s charisma without an intelligent reaction. That was absolutely not the case."
On the contrary, one of the central tenets of my book is to carefully portray the agency that all of the participants in Paraguay - students, teachers, parents, employees, and more - had in reappropriating or, in many cases, rejecting their XOs along with One Laptop per Child’s core tenets. And I celebrate that agency! That said, this agency is not infinite, and I argue in chapter five in particular that treating it as such is a form of “cruel optimism” (with thanks to Lauren Berlant, RIP), where unachievable fantasies and desires can become obstacles to living in the present. Sociological and STS research has long been interested in charting the interplay between individual agency and structural limitations, and this research contributes a detailed case study to that scholarship.
I would appreciate knowing what parts left the author(s) of the manifesto with the impression that I thought anyone in Paraguay or elsewhere in Latin America was “defenseless,” since this really runs counter to one of the book’s central messages. Likewise, a thread running throughout the chapters of the book focused on Paraguay is that far from “bow[ing] down to Nicholas Negroponte’s charisma without an intelligent reaction,” all participants were very active and thoughtful in how they ‘translated’ OLPC’s vision (which was not just Negroponte’s vision, as the book describes in great detail!) into their everyday lives. The extent to which OLPC succeeded at all in Paraguay was because of all the earnest, thoughtful work on the ground by employees who knew that context and by teachers doing their best to make it work, as chapter three goes into great detail explaining.
I absolutely cite other studies on OLPC coming out of Plan Ceibal as well as ones focused on Peru, much of which was generated by local scholars. As I said above, I don’t survey the literature of other classroom technology projects in Latin America that are unrelated to OLPC. This would make a very interesting book in itself but strays from the subject of The Charisma Machine.
Claim: "Pre-pandemic, the author engaged on a book tour all over the US, Germany, Denmark, and Italy. Out of more than ten book talks, zero were done in Latin America."
I welcome opportunities to give book talks in Latin America and elsewhere around the world. Book talks are generally not events I specifically solicit; most start with invitations from colleagues, so it’s not something I’ve had much control over.
The talks I gave in "Germany, Denmark, and Italy" (actually Switzerland, not Italy) were from one trip in October 2019, before and after the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) conference in Milan, Italy. Because I am sensitive to the environmental costs of travel and the difficulties many lower-income areas have to fund visiting speakers, I like opportunities to tack book talks onto conference trips, as well as give virtual talks. I have also received invitations from a couple of other colleagues in the United States, though I would certainly not say that I've been fortunate enough to travel "all over." I do want to note that I was invited to speak about this research in May 2013 in Mexico City, at the annual meeting of Red-SEPA. While I can speak Spanish, a translator was helpful there and would be helpful for future talks for Spanish-speaking audiences. I would be happy to do the legwork to make that happen. Please let me know if you are interested!
Claim: "The endorsements to the book do not have a single scholar from Latin America. Her interviews with the press do not include a single Latin American publication. The book reviews and commentary on her website do not have a single person from Latin America."
MIT Press solicited endorsements. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out who they were, but I was not involved in that choice. Nor did I attempt to control who reached out to interview me about the book, or who chose to review it. Academic presses operate pretty differently than trade presses - there is no grand publicity plan, there is no systematic reaching out to journalists or other academics for book reviews. I certainly welcome book reviews and commentary from whoever would like to offer them, but this isn't something I have control over.
One thing I do have control over, though, is the network of STS scholars doing work in Latin America - quite a few of them based in Latin America themselves, others with deep roots there - that I have gotten to know since I started researching OLPC in 2007. In contributing to the award-winning volume Beyond Imported Magic (MIT Press, 2013), I collaborated with editors Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes, as well as authors Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Javiera Barandiaran, Joao Biehl, Anita Say Chan, Amy Cox Hall, Marcos Cueto, Henrique Cukierman, Ana Delgado, Rafael Dias, Adriana Diaz del Castillo H., Mariano Fressoli, Jonathan Hagood, Matthieu Hubert, Noela Invernizzi, Michael Lemon, Gisela Mateos, Maria Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Hugo Palmarola, Tania Perez-Bustos, Julia Rodriguez, Israel Rodriguez-Giralt, Edna Suarez Diaz, Hernan Thomas, Manuel Tironi, and Dominique Vinck. In contributing to the volume Digital Humanities in Latin America (U. Press of Florida, 2020), I collaborated with editors Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez as well as authors Paul Alonso, Eduard Arriaga, Anita Say Chan, Ricardo Dominguez, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Jennifer M. Lozano, Ana Lígia Silva Medeiros, Gimena del Río Riande, Isabel Galina Russell, Angharad Valdivia, Anastasia Valecce, and Cristina Venegas. Of course I can’t claim to know all scholars across Latin America, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to know this phenomenal group of scholars doing STS and Digital Humanities work in Latin America, and meeting many others at conferences and other events over the years.
Claim: "Research for the book concluded in 2013. Yet it came out in 2020. As far as we know, no follow-up data collection or updating happened in seven years, during which extensive local research took place and implementations were refined."
I was six months pregnant when I was in Paraguay in 2013 doing my follow-up fieldwork, and had a second child in 2016. I hope that these scholars appreciate how parenthood largely precludes overseas fieldwork. This was especially true for me because my partner's job is not mobile, I do not have family in Paraguay to help with childcare, I did not have travel funding, and I had a number of postdoc and teaching duties throughout those years that made travel difficult.
That said, I have stayed in touch with several contacts in Paraguay and have followed Paraguay Educa’s developments, as well as developments in Plan Ceibal and other projects, from afar. In talks I often discuss Paraguay Educa’s pivot to supporting girls’ robotics clubs and their other initiatives - though these initiatives generally aren’t about One Laptop per Child so much anymore.
Those who have published a book with a University Press will also appreciate how long the publication process is. Even with two very small children at home at the time as well as data collection for other research projects underway, I finished my first full draft of the book in December 2017. I received reviewer comments in April 2018, and sent my revisions in August 2018. Then came the copyediting, the MIT-hired fact checking, the indexing, and several rounds of proofing, much of this on timelines out of my control. All of these wrapped up in late spring 2019, and then the book went into production that summer for a November 2019 release (note: not 2020).
Claim: “Given the lack of funding for public schools in Latin America and the complexity of building infrastructure, many of these programs took several years or decades to take hold, not just a year or two.”
I wholeheartedly agree - and in fact, this is the focus on chapter six of the book. However, One Laptop per Child promised more rapid transformations, and most OLPC projects, with the exception of Uruguay, were only set up for a few years of funding. This is all too common in NGOs and development projects more generally, where flashy short-term projects are favored over lasting interventions, and projects too often end up performing success for their funders rather than grappling with the realities of costly maintenance and incremental benefits. There are, of course, exceptions, but I write about this trend in hopes that exposing it might change it and lead to more long-term support with realistic goals.
Claim: “… the book's central claim [is] that “charismatic constructionist technologies” have consistently fooled the developing world.”
This is so far from the central claim of the book as to be almost the opposite. The Charisma Machine shows how poorly One Laptop per Child’s US-centric vision, based on US imaginaries, translated - and what the material and ideological consequences of this mistranslation was.