Ames' concept of the "technically precocious boy" is her entire thesis in a nutshell: that the creators of the OLPC projected their values, experiences, and assumptions onto the whole project.

I have conducted hours of interviews with early personal computing pioneers and have noticed a lot of similar backstories when they first talk about what attracted them to computing. Almost all of the men I've interviewed have some memory of taking apart and re-assembling devices when they were young boys and they recall this as being formative.

On the other hand, what is computing? What is it supposed to "be like"? Is it a technology like a car, or a bicycle, or other complex productive machinery? Or is it instead like pencil and paper and the writing systems / literacy that go along with it?

If we go with the latter concept -- a "new kind of literacy" -- then this argument of the "technically precocious boy" only applies to the specific form of the technology produced. In other words, imagine criticizing ancient Mesopotamian scribes trying to extend the reach of writing because they specifically sought to teach in other lands the imprinting reed shapes into clay. One could argue (for good reason) that this is probably a bad approach, but that's less to do with the fact that said scribes learned this process as boys and/or had some initial affinity for it.

Ames also hedges her bets in the book early on: she bases her critique entirely on the writings of people like Papert and Negroponte, but explicitly says she will not be evaluating constructivism as a pedagogical framework. That's sort of too bad -- Papert et al were not just creating computing systems they thought would revolutionize education. They assumed that there would already be some kind of forthcoming revolution in education regardless, and they wanted to secure computing's place in that new world. It never came to pass. I feel like it's an under explored angle.

Of course these are complicated questions. Ames' book is really valuable as a postmortem, especially the parts that are based on her fieldwork. And I do think that the "technically precocious boy" framing is good in that it creates space to have a really nuanced conversation about this aspect of computing and education.