That's a gloomy stance to take and one that in all likelihood is thoroughly misguided. While it's true that most software doesn't directly help cure cancer, fi

That's a gloomy stance to take and one that in all likelihood is thoroughly misguided. While it's true that most software doesn't directly help cure cancer, fix world hunger or any of the other big, seemingly insurmountable problems, software massively helps with those quests: Where would the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation be without software (and I don't mean the fortune Bill earned with selling software)? New cancer treatments are often found through software-assisted processes. Organisations like GiveWell use software to objectively analyse the positive effect charities have. Even if you don't take these pretty direct positive impacts of software for the greater good into account, in order to be able to do their job organisations that try to make the world a better place need boring administrative systems like CRMs, ERPs and CMS, too (not to even mention operating systems like Linux and web server software like Apache). If it weren't for software all of this would have to be done manually, which would make these organisations much less effective. On top of that there's the unprecedented opportunity for worldwide communication and coordination made possible by the Internet.