Now anyone with a library card can be published
Posted by Nelson de Witt on November 26, 2009 under Social Entrepreneurship | 
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Technology, and epically the Internet, has real power to drive social, economic, and political change. During my life I have experienced, first hand, the potential they have to transform the world.
Out of college, one of the first books I read was Tom’s Friedman’s The World is Flat. He talked about how the convergence of several technologies flattened the world and created economic growth in developing nations. Over the past 12 years, during my travels to Latin America, I was able to experience these forces at work. I got to see the sleepy country of Panama transformed into an engine of growth for Latin America. I watched as they built new roads, hospitals, and stores. I saw the power a flatter world had to raise the standard of living for the people of Panama and my family.
Last year digital technologies began to play an important role in presidential elections. Debates where broadcast on YouTube and individuals from the crowd asked questions on a national stage. Candidates from both sides tried to leverage these new tools to spread their message and raise money. Recently government agencies have opened up their data in an attempt to provide better service. There is a big opportunity to use these tools improve their effectiveness.
Beyond the economic and political changes that technology brings, it is a driving force for social justice. This is perhaps one of the most important changes to me. During the summer the government in Iran struggled to silence the voices of its people. Thanks to new inventions such as Twitter and Facebook the people of Iran were able to speak and share their experiences with the world.
I wonder what my life would have been like if these technologies existed 30 years ago. My parents were revolutionizes in El Salvador’s civil war. They fought a repressive government that was secretly backed by the US. A government that raped, killed, and destroyed the lives of many Salvadorans. A government that kidnapped children to punish its citizens. A government that did whatever it took to silence the voices of the weak.
I am not naive to think that the revolutionaries were not at fault for some of the destruction. Many of the people the they fought for got caught in the cross fire. Violence is rarely an effective means for creating real change, but it can be a last resort when there are limited options. If these technologies were available, maybe it would have been different for them. Maybe they would have had a chance to be herd on a global scale.
I do not think most people truly understand how powerful this is. Or what it means for people like my mother and father who sacrificed everything but did not have the tools to create meaningful change. In 2004 I herd this quote by a Microsoft employee. “Now anyone with a library card can be published and because of that the world has changed.” To me, that statement embodies the power of technology and the Internet. There is still along way to go but this summer showed that those voices can no longer be silenced.
While technology alone can not heal the wounds of El Salvador, they promise to bring much needed change to the world. My hope is that new innovations will make it harder for governments to get away with human rights violations and will lift developing nations out of poverty. I see a lot of potential but still so much work to be done.
Ashoka: Innovators for the Public are hosting Tech 4 Society, a conference exploring technology, invention and social change, in Hyderabad, India, in February 2009. Find out more about the conference here. This blog post is an entry in their competition to find the official blogger to travel to and cover the event.