MIT Q&A with Bono: How Technology Can Transform the World
This is from Technology Review. It proves that not only is Bono a technology investor (he’s a founder of Elevation Partners, a Silicon Valley private equity firm) but also has a grasp of technology itself.
Bono answered questions over e-mail from MIT Technology Review’s deputy editor, Brian Bergstein, about the role technologies—from vaccines to information services—can play in solving our biggest problems.
It’s 2013, and millions of people are still short of food or proper medical care. Have technologists overpromised?
The tech that’s been delivered has been staggering in its measurable achievements. For example, antiretrovirals, a complex 15-drug AIDS regimen compressed into one pill a day (now saving eight million lives); the insecticide-treated bed net (cut malaria deaths by half in eight countries in Africa in the last three years); kids’ vaccinations (saved 5.5 million lives in the last decade); the mobile phone, the Internet, and spread of information—a deadly combination for dictators, for corruption.
But to maximize the massive effect technology can have, you need a network of efforts, a system of interventions, supported by citizens who share social capital. That’s what drives substantial progress sustainably. There is no silver bullet to ending extreme poverty and disease, no magic technology. That takes commitment, a lifetime of it, plus resources, political will, and people standing up to demand it. Technology provides the means, however.
What should be the role of technology in making a better world? Are some problems beyond its reach, like poverty?
Technology has already helped tackle extreme poverty in Africa. Extreme poverty is the empirical condition of living on under $1.25 a day. Nelson Mandela once demanded we be the “great generation” to beat extreme poverty, noting how we have the technology and resources to achieve this extraordinary vision. And we do. We could achieve it by 2030, maybe before. The digital revolution that we are living through, the rapid advances in health and agrotechnology—these things have become core weapons in responding to Mandela’s clarion call. They enable people to get on with it themselves, to fight their way out of the condition they find themselves in. In Africa, things are changing so rapidly. What’s been a slow march is suddenly picking up pace in ways we could not have imagined even 10 years ago. Innovations like farmers using mobile phones to check seed prices, for banking, for sending payments … to the macro effect we saw with the Arab Spring thanks to Facebook and Twitter.
But people can use technology for bad as well as good. The social systems and the social capital within networks must be strong and positive to nurture a progressive use of technology. Let’s be honest.
