By George Mensah
The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, with greediness and corruption surely not that far behind in being responsible for the inequalities that exist in the world. But this sadly is not the view of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), who have recently argued that technological innovation causes economic inequality.
To me, this seems like a narrow minded and rather bizarre viewpoint, as there are much greater issues than advancing technology widening the demarcation between the modern day bourgeois and proletariat. But let’s address the further accusation made that it’s those people who possess technological skills who are somehow to blame for economic inequality.
Quite frankly, were it not for innovation who of us can be 100% sure we would be here right now? For the IMF to suggest that we were better off as a society when we had marginal advancement is hypocritical. We need technologically-oriented minds to solve a lot of the social problems we experience today.
For instance, discouraging scientists and engineers with anti-technology bias is certainly not helping us to address the numerous ailments and diseases that still afflict our society. And if students are being steered clear of these disciplines when considering higher education, then what will the future be like in a few years to come?
It’s often easy to forget the immense benefits that great minds and the technology they’ve created have delivered. Just one such example is the impact of the Cell Broadband Engine, originally developed for high-performance processing in PS3 games consoles, but now being used by scientists to make greater progress in the study of protein folding and its link to diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and certain forms of cancer.
True, inequality does exist in this world - but technology is far from being the main culprit.
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