The True Power of Technology

Now that I spend a good deal of time keeping up with all the blogs in my Google Reader, the people I follow on Twitter, and all my friends on Facebook, I've started to realize the true power of technology to bring worlds together that 5 years ago would have never been possible.

5 years ago I was just finishing up my Peace Corps service in Mali. I had never owned a cell phone before my service as they were just starting to become popular towards the end of my college career, and in Mali they were just starting to pop up in the big cities. Now my wife talks to her family who live in a rural farming village with no electricity or running water weekly via a cell phone we bought her brother. Now everyone in the village has cell phones.

(Here's a link to an interview with Jeffrey Sachs on how cell phones are connecting the world.)

When I was serving in Mali connecting with the outside world was via occasional trips to the capital or regional capital to use email or make a phone call home on a land line. There was also, of course, snail mail. I was bad about writing letters and keeping people up to date on what I was up to. Now it seems more common than not for volunteers to have blogs where they post regular updates of their experience abroad. I've seen people using Facebook and Twitter to share the work they're doing and even seek professional help and funding.

When I tried to organize a project to dig a well in my village, I had a hard time connecting with the right resources to figure out what to do. I had to travel long distances to meet with various people and wait a long time to get answers. Now the potential is there for a volunteer in even the most remote places to connect directly with in country and stateside professionals for immediate advice.

When my wife and I first came back from Africa together and were facing the first challenges of her adjustment to life in the US and how to stay connected and help her family back home, we struggled to face these challenges on our own. Now through Facebook, Twitter, and blogs we have become connected to others facing the same struggles and were able to harness the generosity of our family and friends (something we were always too timid to ask for directly before).

For the past 5 years I've been struggling with how we might find a way to start to truly make an impact in Mali. I'm was never an expert in development and was never well connected to any "experts". I didn't really know where to look. Now thanks to Facebook, Twitter and blogs I am starting to find a path. Just through posting various links of personal interest to me on Twitter people with similar interests have started to follow me....and following these people has led me to find even more resources than I could find on my own not to mention finding and connecting to the "experts" I wasn't connected to before. I'll admit that I haven't quite found the exact path I want to follow, but thanks to social media I think I'm a lot closer to figuring that out than I ever was before.

I hope in the next 5 years to put these powerful tools to some good use. And I can't wait for the next great tool to come along that brings us all a step closer to bringing the world together.