these narratives of being self-taught invariably smoothed over the social support and scaffolding that, though unacknowledged, had generally helped these hackers. These might have included a stable home environment and a resource-rich, infrastructurally stable community that supported technically precocious children such as themselves, and also often included a parent who was a computer programmer or engineer. OLPC’s idea of the self-taught learner who disdains school for computers thus discounted the critical role that various institutions—peers, families, schools, communities, and more—play
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