Power On!

Power On! (MIT Press, April 2022) is an original graphic novel inspired by young people whose views deserve to be heard – yet who too often find that the technology they use each and every day promotes practices that keep them marginalized without a seat at the table.

This book follows the lives and experiences of four high school students from diverse backgrounds as they confront the harm technology has done in their own community. We follow them as they awaken to how technology can perpetuate racism and inequality and gradually understand that those who run the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley create technologies that do not reflect the voices and perspectives of themselves: women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and immigrant communities. In response, the four friends seek out computing experiences that are both personally and politically empowering, and decide to use what they’ve learned to take a stand for all students to learn computer science.

Informed by decades of educational research and young reader feedback about learning computing, Power On! brings to life the ethical complexities of technology and why young readers need the knowledge to be critical creators of technology, not merely users who are shaped and controlled by it.