Technology is not the solution to poverty

You might think that technology is the solution to poverty – but here’s why you’re wrong.

• Technologies created and sold by big business will be rolled out by Technology creators in place of real solutions to global inequality.
• 62 people have more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population. 
• In the USA and Europe, large sections of the population have no faith at all in the institutions that govern society.
• The world’s richest man i.e. Bill Gates can’t give his money away fast enough, quite literally, because his wealth grows by multiple billions of dollars every year, a symptom of an economic system skewed to the interests of the very richest.
• Technology allows us to grow more food, to slow down climate change, to provide all of our energy needs, to end all of our suffering. 
• It does not challenge the status quo i.e. rich will remain richer and poor will remain poorer. 
• Who wants to question Bill Gates's statement a year ago that, if we just keep going “there will be almost no poor countries by 2035”.
• Yet to be invested technologies can theoretically provide abundance for all.
• The power of the 1 per cent rich actually means that, all things being equal, those technologies will simply reinforce that power. 
• Gates foundation is the biggest funder of research into genetic modification in the world. Gates pushes intensive farming methods involving plenty of chemicals and privatization of seed distribution. Time and again, these ‘solutions’ have proved disastrous for small farmers, allowing big players to effectively control the whole food system. They also ramp up global carbon emissions and fuel global warming.
• The cult of technology is useful for the world’s most powerful people. But if the rest of us are really interested in creating a better world, we need to look beyond the words of Bill Gates and challenge his power. 

My View:
Technology alone will never solve our problems like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption etc. At best Technology can improve what we are good at. If we are honest we will improve our honesty. If we are rogues we will improve our roguishness etc. 

What we need to do is focus on (1) education and ethical education. (2) population control which minimizes or nullifies the impact of our development. (3) elimination of corruption especially in public domain etc, over a period of time. 

Export oriented economic development has its own pitfalls. We should focus on developing what we are good at to become self sufficient in all segments and earn enough through exports to meet the needs of petroleum products import, only to maintain trade account balances every year.

In any good system, middle class should expand and poor class should shrink. Otherwise progress is meaning less. At the same time rich class should be monitored for their undesirable practices of amassing wealth and must be controlled.