I know this is a strange topic for me to choose – anyone who knows me will know that I am not very technology-minded! Yet I have been thinking about how powerfully technology can actually help us make a difference, prompted in part by the book ‘Here Comes Everybody’ (see review).
At the same time as email seems to be giving people at work more and more to do and respond to urgently, it is also enabling us to keep easy contact with friends and family who live at a distance. At the same time as social networking technology enables people to express their trivia to the world, it also enables social movements to build quickly and influence world affairs.
And, on a simpler level, the technology of digital cameras means that my grand-daughter can have a wonderful time taking as many photos as she likes, and practising how to take really good ones, because we can just save the best ones.
I often bemoan the fact that technology makes us its servant, but am reminded again that, when it is technology that is the servant, when we use it well, it can transform our world.
So every time we use technology to easily and quickly lift another’s spirits with our communication, every time we use technology to express our desire for justice, peace, human rights, every time we use technology to bring joy in some form, let’s celebrate it!
And whenever we use technology without good purpose, let’s question it, and ask what else we could do, so that it served us better.
This will reach you through the internet, the world-wide web, which was deliberately established to be an open and free means of global communication. The original intention was to allow anyone and everyone to have access and to be able to express themselves and communicate with others. This was based on a belief that, when given that possibility, the best of human behaviour would shine through. Let’s prove that right!!
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