Computer Geeks are awesome. I know' I'm one of them. They are talented,
smart, Intelligent, polite, well groomed, rich and talented oh… I already said
that.
But are they good?
Well I think not. Not to our world, not to our people, not to our rich,
not to our poor. Not at all.
And as every geek will do, I'll tell you why.
Have you seen the 30Under40
List?. It's full of them. Facbook, instagram, tumbler bla bla bla. All rich, good
looking (or well disguised), smiling. All of them talented but none of them
produce anything of value to humanity. Meeting place, high end cloth, data
storage, search engines. Well, it's important, I'll grant them, but, I would
like to say that this is not why they inhabit the earth.
To start at it, I want you to think about Maslow's Hierarchy
of needs. It starts at the base with physical needs and ends with self
actualization. You might ask: Why do you think its bad that talented people
self actualize themselves? I don’t, but self actualizing yourself at the expense
of other people is bad.
Think of your shoes. They where made by a seamstress crouching over her
sawing machine somewhere in china. I have seen a sawing machine that could do
her job 10 years ago; they did not liberate that poor woman. She still saws
your shoes the way my grandfather used to do in his shop 40 years ago. Your
food, or most of it, is still harvested in a back breaking way because funding
for agricultural research is scarce. I know, I harvest dates this way every
year and fight for the pennies in research funds. Have you noticed that funding
for renewable energy in the USA
is as much as one hour of pumped gas at the stations? Yes if you stopped
driving for an hour you could double the USA research on renewable energy.
And all of this could be reversed if all the talented people will stop
and say: I have this gift and I need to use it for the benefit of everyone.
It's not mine to have. It is a resource I should use to help mankind.
We could have cured almost every disease now through technology. Hunger
is beaten using technology, energy shortage is just an old nightmare if we will
use technology.
Do you think the wise people behind Facebook can't make an automatic
corn harvester? Of course they can. The technology is there. There is an
automatic car there. The harvester is there, but there is no fame and money in combining
them to a working machine. Do you think the people at Microsoft couldn't make a
better way to harvest sun into energy? Of course they can but why bother
fighting old oil companies?
Well the reason is that it’s the right thing to do. To go beyond your
way and change the world for good. And I mean GOOD not forever. The forever
will come later.
So, good People, Talented people, rich people (yes you too). Let's call
on ourselves and do the right thing. Make the world a better place through
technology.
