The myth of scale is seductive because it is easier to spread technology than to effect extensive change in social attitudes and human capacity. In other words, it is much less painful to purchase a hundred thousand PCs than to provide a real education for a hundred thousand children; it is easier to run a text-messaging health hotline than to convince people to boil water before ingesting it; it is easier to write an app that helps people find out where they can buy medicine than it is to persuade them that medicine is good for their health.

— Kentaro Toyama (Boston Review) - Can Technology End Poverty? (Spoiler Alert: The answer is no. I particularly like the explanation that technology is multiplicative not additive, so for a society trending negative, technology just makes the slide faster. Via llimllib)