I'm pretty sure mine were some of the criticism you heard ;-) My critique largely focused on the imperialist attitude of the project: Negroponte described the project with hope that it would be as impactful as the "Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria" without any sense of recognition of th negative impact of those ships. When the first technical bring up touted OLPC developers running Doom on it, it was a reminder of how, no matter how much we claim technology is absent of agenda, it is many ways a reflection of the values of the developers.
Everything done by anyone is a reflection of them, their needs, constrains, ideas, and knowledge. Intention matters, and inaction is intention-less.
However I don’t think your metaphor is apt — OLPC didn’t intend to be a conquest in any way that was about extracting resources let alone bring resources those back home.
The OLPC didn’t replace something, it created something. It pointed a way.
Does it really? We all know the saying about the road to hell, and I suspect the people on the receiving end didn't particularly care about intentions, especially if the result was a net negative.
I seem to remember Carlos Fuentes narrating an entire series "The Buried Mirror" starting out with that (he immediately follows it with "[Columbus put his newly-discovered] noble savage in chains") but I don't see anyone calling him racist.
