Meet the Pioneers of the "Tech for Good" Revolution

In 1926, when my grandmother was born, there were 2 billion people on the planet. In 2016 when my daughter was born—just three generations later—we more than tripled the number of people living on this planet to more than 7.4 billion. Alongside this increase in population, our demand for resources from the planet has increased as well. The level of consumption we see from my and my daughter’s generations is vastly greater than that of my grandmother’s generation.

We have been able to meet our growing demands for food, water and energy, in large part, due to “advancements” in technology that have enabled us to extract resources from our finite planet and distribute them across the world, faster than ever before.

Much good has come of these changes. They have helped lift many people out of poverty. And they have certainly allowed those of us in the upper and middle classes to live much more comfortable, convenient lives. But the way we have deployed these technologies has had serious costs—habitat loss, pollution, climate change, and much more. How much longer can we continue on the path we are on?

It goes without saying that we need to continue to raise people’s standards of living. Nearly 800 million people live in extreme poverty, lacking access to sufficient food, water and healthcare —to say nothing of the comfort and security so many of us take for granted. The question is how do we do this in the face of real planetary boundaries?

To start, those of us who are most well off need to make some serious changes in our behavior and consumption patterns. But we also need a revolution in the technologies that helped bring us to where we are today—one that puts us back on a path to a sustainable future.

It’s time for technology to be part of the solution. Not part of the problem.