Giving, or philanthropy, is nothing new. It has been going on for ages. People, institutions and governments have been donating money and resources to their families and their communities since thousands of years. But today, as we move into the 21st century, we are more connected with each other than ever before in the history of mankind. Through technology solutions like the internet, mobile phones and other connected devices, the whole world is more united than it ever was.

The topic of this article is to discuss and debate the role technology will play in giving and philanthropy in the coming decades. There have already been some examples of how technology can help connect people from different parts of the world and promote giving in unique ways that wasn’t possible even 20 years ago. Kiva , DonorsChoose and Kickstarter are just a few of the examples who have come up in developed countries like the US and the UK and connected donors from these countries to small entrepreneurs in countries like Mexico, India, China and from Africa.

One difference which we can credit technology for is moving giving from a local to a global landscape. Traditionally, giving and philanthropy has been limited… Read the rest

Innovation is defined as the creation of better or more effective products, technologies or ideas that makes life easier for its customers and solves a problem in the process. Innovation is the buzz word these days in business circles and the use of technology in designing innovative solutions across different sectors has never been more pronounced before.

If you see innovation discussions happening these days, most people will list the iPhone and the iPad, Facebook, the Sony Walkman and other technology related stuff on the top of their list. While such innovations have captured the media attention and earned a lot of money and market share for the respective companies behind them, there is another kind of innovation happening in the world. This new kind of innovation is happening in developing countries, even in villages, but it is not being covered by media, not being distributed across markets and countries, and not being talked about as much as iPad and other similar products.

While the first kind of innovation is mostly happening for business reasons and are focussing on making life more comfortable for its users (and not necessarily solving any critical problems), the second kind of… Read the rest

I came across this pic and could not stop wondering how true it is. It totally describes what our life has become these days. With the advent of internet and social networking, everything has moved to the screen of our laptop. We work on our laptop, we talk with friends on the laptop, we take a break by listening to music or watching movies, again on our laptop and many of us (atleast me) sleep with our laptop ON downloading some movie or software.

Isn’t it amazing how technology has influenced us? How facebook has become the first thing to do in the morning rather than brushing our teeth? And all this technology is only 10 years old. Ever wondered how we used to live our lives before that

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The story of the last decade and a half is how the smallest unit in our lives has changed from atoms to bits. Atoms as in molecules has given way to bits as in bytes. For somebody who has grown up reading in textbooks that atom is the smallest unit, seeing this massive change is something nobody could have imagined back then.

And “back then” is only 10-15 years ago, not decades or centuries as the term is normally used for. My first computer had a 4GB hard disk in the year 2000, now my mobile has double that space. That 4GB hard disk cost my father a whopping 6000 bucks, but my latest 1TB hard disk cost me only 4500 bucks!! The cost per GB has fallen from Rs 1500 per GB to Rs 4.5 per GB. This massive change reflects everything that has happen in the computing world in only a decade.

It is said that change is the only constant. But this time the speed of change is what is amazing. And for the first time, the smallest unit has changed from atoms to bits. Things have moved to the digital world from the real world… Read the rest