A political position that asserts that liberty is the principal objective of human life. Libertarians propose the maximization of individual autonomy and freedom of choice against any potential collective benefit, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association and the primacy of individual judgement, while striving to limit the power and functions of the State.
Published in Chapter:
Technological Illusions and Educational Resistances: The Public Discourse about OLPC in Peru and Its Policy Failure
Eduardo Villanueva-Mansilla (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
Copyright: © 2016
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8740-0.ch025
Abstract
OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child initiative, was accepted by just a few countries, including Peru. The largest acquisition of computers has produced a fairly low impact in education and is now being quietly phased-out. Peru's government decision to adopt the computers, back in 2007, was not contested or questioned by the political class, the media or even teachers, with just a rather small number of specialists arguing against it. This chapters discussed the political and argumentative processes that brought OLPC into the public sphere, through the use of a specific narrative, that of hackerism, i.e., the hacker attitude towards computers, and how social and political validation resulted in adoption. An assessment of the process of framing OLPC as a hacker product and the perils of such reasoning lead to discuss the need for a counter-narrative about the role of computers in society.