Science and Technology and the Future (of the Poor)

The future we are racing towards seems to have no place for the 3.6 billion humans who do not have access to the internet, the 4.97 billion of the population who do not own a smartphone and the billions more who do not have access to flush toilets*.

But these are the very people who need technological advancements the most. They, who are unable to enroll to school because they are running on bare feet for miles every day to find clean water to drink and wash. Yes, this phenomenon still exists and these survival duties consumes all their time and energy. By contrast, most people with a smartphone (no more than 35.13% of the population) complain about having to involve themselves in tedious endeavors such as taking meeting minutes at their sophisticated workplace and cleaning their minimalist houses and apartments. 

The small percent of the population who enjoy most technological, scientific and medical evolution, are looking forward to their personal assistant at work and their nanny robot at home. This way, we can all be bosses- more of us, exploiting the poor. 

I was thinking about how we would be cornering the greater percentile of the world’s population to work monotonous jobs for longer hours and less money, putting pieces of our robots and voice assistants together. However, I realized that manual factory work won’t be necessary anymore. With Machination, we would be depriving them of their source of income altogether. Cutting the throats of billions of workers with families.

Before I suggest individual solution, I want to discuss the government’s solution. 

The government’s solution is not financial assistance every month. That is ridiculous. A waste of money or a tactical play that makes people dependent on the state. However such relief cannot be pulled back in an instance, the dependent would crumble. The proper solution consists of the basics: Urban development so that in the near future children, teenagers, young adults, adults and elderly can go to school and receive education and knowledge to be functional contributors to society and country, thus increasing their value and then their financial income and then their stability and quality of life. 

Few countries have successfully developed and urbanized their accumulations of living spaces and work places in the last 50 years. And countries aspiring to step into their feet are using olden methods and outdated solutions that do not comply with the demographics and needs of their people. Development solutions have ceased to work efficiently in most countries, because the plans followed are firstly not up to date with the easier and faster technology we have now, as compared to 50 or 20 years ago. And secondly, the development plans are not tailored to the region and it’s people, which is critical to observe any change at all.

It is the poorest, most rural and primitive places in this world, the parts you don’t see online, that need all that science and technology and innovation and startups and money pumping. 

Instead of worrying about psychological damage of robot-replaced people and speculating about how fat the human is going to get, involve yourself in feeding the poor and improving their quality of life! 

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* More People Have Cell Phones Than Toilets, U.N. Study Shows | TIME.com