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152 So Where Now?

growing appropriation of educational technology as a site for the enactment of what
can be termed ‘philanthrocapitalism’ (see Bishop and Green 2008). As various
chapters of the book have illustrated, this is especially noticeable within the context
of low-income countries where the framing of educational technology access and
use as an advanced human right has been pursued vigorously by a host of private
actors in conjunction with non-government organisations. Educational technology
has therefore become an important site for the activities of various forms of venture
capitalists, social entrepreneurs and other strains of ‘creative capitalism’– i.e. actors
seeking to harness the power of the market and the use of business principles for
social good (McGoey 2011). As such, educational technology in now an important
arena for the various activities of edu-businesses, advocacy networks, policy entre-
preneurs, social enterprises and other forms of ‘new’ philanthropy that increasingly
inhabit public policy and the provision of public services (see Ball 2012).

Moving Beyond the Inequalities of Education, Technology
and Globalisation
Having outlined the shortcomings of past and present educational technology
arrangements, we now need to consider the options for future change. As Sonia
Livingstone (2012, p.19) puts it, there are “three forms of critique relevant to grand
claims made for the new technologies, asking in essence, what’s really going on,
how can this be explained, and how could things be otherwise?” We now need to
turn our attention to Livingstone’s suggestion of thinking ‘otherwise’. Of course,
even within this book’s largely critical overview it has been possible to point
towards some examples of educational technology ‘success’ that have undoubtedly
enhanced the lives of individuals in a variety of ways around the world. Even an
obviously flawed large-scale programme such as One Laptop Per Child could be
considered a success in terms of distributing over 2 million laptops in otherwise
‘technology-poor’ settings. Yet as this book has pointed out, at best these forms of
educational technology intervention can be judged only as partial successes, with
any benefits most often being experienced in urban centres and/or by already
privileged classes. In addition, these interventions are limited by the tendency of
many educators, policymakers and technologists to frame the presumed benefits
of educational technology around narrow criteria of economic ‘success’. As Nick
Couldry (2010, p.59) notes, this is a predominant notion of benefit that is “limited
to the principle that everyone should have, indeed should be required to take up,
the opportunity to enter the job market”.
Thus one of the first ways of thinking ‘otherwise’ about educational technology
is to reconsider dominant assumptions about why educational technology is a ‘good
thing’ for societies and the individuals within them. In other words, we first need
to challenge and problematise what are assumed to be the ‘benefits’ and ‘outcomes’
of educational technology in terms of whose interests are being benefited and
advantaged. Take, for instance, the recurring theme of educational technologies