Change the World

This is something I've been thinking about lately.

Growing up, I convinced myself that it was my calling in life to change the world in a major way, that somehow my life was not worthwhile if it didn't have some far-reaching impact on "the way people live their lives". Recently reading a lot of news about Steve Jobs and the way he "changed the way people live their lives", it's really made me think about what kind of mark I want to make on the world. Here's what I came up with.

It's not enough to change the way people live their lives. What's vastly more important is improving the quality of life. Although I love technology and innovation, I look over the past decade of innovation in consumer electronics (smaller/more powerful laptops, mp3 players, smart phones, WiFi, touch UI, bluetooth, hyprethreading, quad core, Facebook, Netflix, Kindle Fire, etc.) and I'm left thinking that the quality-of-life improvement all of these things have brought me has been marginal at best. Am I really that much happier because I'm writing this blog on a tablet instead of a desktop computer? Am I dramatically better off now that I can browse the internet from my phone? More importantly, is that the kind of legacy I want to leave behind? A new UI paradigm? A new social network? The next "innovative" new Software-As-A-Service?

Touch-based smart phones aren't life changing. Tablet devices aren't life changing. You want to know what's life changing? Clean water for the 12% of the world's population that doesn't currently have access to it, that's what's really life changing. That's the kind of thing that is really changing lives in a meaningful way. That's something that's worth being part of, a legacy much more worth passing on. If you're interested in being a part of that, you should check out http://www.charitywater.org/.

To be clear, I am totally into electronics innovation. There are some really cool things going on, and a lot of really interesting opportunities. But for me, I think the passion to innovate on technology stems from my passion to improve lives. An innovation is only as compelling to me as the life change it brings, which makes a biosand water filter demonstrably much more compelling and innovative in my eyes than any consumer device I own. That's right. Given the right context, a bucket of sand is more innovative than my smart phone. ;P