Build an app that lets people see when the bus is really coming, so they don’t have to sit alone at a dark bus stop when they get off the swing shift. Help people create neighborhood community sites that can be accessed via cheap Android phones. Help organize classes to teach technology to people who can’t even afford to go to community college. Help get Raspberry Pis or netbooks into schools that can barely afford textbooks.
You don’t even have to do it for free. If you sell poor people things they need at a price they can afford, they will love you. Whenever you get all het up about Facebook’s valuation, remember that the third-largest corporation on Earth — with a revenue stream greater than the GDP of Austria — specifically targets working class people, and that the family who owns it could buy Mark Zuckerberg ten times over. As Susan Oguya said to me, the base of the pyramid is the largest part
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Joshua Ellis’ Inspire Talk (via worsethandetroit)
There is a kind of imperialism and speaking for the “other” in this talk that disturbs me… But it disturbs me less than technological elitism, which it aims to attack.
(via notational)
