The focus of most of this week’s readings, and of much of the course in general—not to mention the larger industry [sector? movement?] of social innovation—seems to be on projects and products that seek to improve the lives of those living with the least, i.e., people in lowest common denominator of conditions. And I suppose it makes sense intuitively that those would be the primary beneficiaries of such work.

But it seems a strange thing to back up and consider that at a time when many of the smartest and most inventive people in the world are producing mind-bogglingly advanced technology—robots, and drones, and particle accelerators, oh my!—another faction of cutting-edge minds is trying to still trying to solve some of humanity’s oldest problems. The search for water on mars occurs in tandem with the search for ways to bring clean water to rural Africa. Thus is the paradox of our times, the elasticity of the human condition.

When reading about Professor Silver’s self-adjusting glasses, water-purifying products like those produced by Lifestraw, and the various devices and programs improving living conditions for people suffering from extreme poverty in Africa (such as the Cardiopad), I was undeniably impressed by the creativity and innovation on display. But what struck me even more was the prevalence of the needs being addressed—the staggering rates of disease, homelessness/displacement, deprivation, and so on (albeit, mostly declining, as many of us have probably seen Hans and Ola Rosling entertainingly explain) that affect so many people in the world.

In Jeffrey Sachs seminal and aptly-named book, The End of Poverty, he suggested that it would take a little less than the equivalent of one percent of Gross National Product from OECD countries, or about five percent of the US annual budget, to end extreme poverty around the globe. So I’m left wondering if the next truly revolutionary social innovation—in our culture of distraction and noise—won’t be less technological and more philosophical. How do we get people to pay attention? How do we get people to contribute? Do these questions not encompass all the more specific and technical issues that so many social innovators are seeking to solve?