Friday, March 30, 2007

Can we rebuild it? Can we make it stronger?

Someone asked me for ideas on how to use technology to make the world better. Whoa. Changing the world is a lot easier than making it a better place. It takes historians decades to begin to decipher the lasting effects of historical forces. Lenin cared greatly about his fellow man, and the fruits of his intellect were poison. A vicious brute can cause a long term swing in the opposite direction when the world is disgusted by his ego and cruelty.


Trying to guess what will "make the world a better place" is probably a lot like flipping a coin. However my best suggestion would be helping to educate intelligent poor children anywhere in the world. Technology can help with this. A cheap used computer with a monitor and an Internet connection costs about $250 plus $100 a year. It is an encyclopedia of great power and allows a bright young person to learn anything. Check out the link below - it is MIT's OLPC (one laptop per child) media lab initiative. I believe it is the most important thing we can do to improve the world.

If you were hoping to create an idea yourself, I would ask you this: why? Smarter and more caring people than us have started thouands of great projects. It is a truer and better thing to help them than to waste time reinventing a poorer wheel. Helping severly impoverished people live longer without helping them educate their children is meaningless. Teach a person to read...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you on the education part but not that we should give up thinking of an inovation way to do charity.

After all the history of running(here i use runing not doing) charity is not that long. It's is a byproduct of a stable and rich society and we didn't reach taht point long time ago. There is still a big room of creativity, like how to run a charity group;how to be efficient; how to merge new technology into charitable activity...etc...

-----by ruobing