https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty >The percentage of the global population living in absolute poverty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty >The percentage of the global population living in absolute poverty fell from over 80% in 1800 to under 20% by 2015. This is astonishing. In the time frame he's focusing on, from the 90s to now, the decrease in absolute poverty and substantial increases in well-being globally are facts that subsume any single technology or widget or innovation. 24% in 1990 down to around 7% today. More people are living better lives than at any point before in history, and this should be celebrated, but hardly seems to be noticed. The things he points out, however, are crucial pieces of why things have gotten better. We're able to instantly connect to a global pool of information, alerting each other to the swarm of problems facing the world, and we're able to take action. Charitable donations, political activism, decentralized media, ubiquitous internet access, and a thousand other small things have enabled and inspired people to use powerful networks of people and computers and resources to effectively target and fix huge problems facing billions of people. Sure, we have real challenges in the misbehavior of big tech companies and the politics of the panopticon, but maybe we can be hopeful that history has a trend toward a more liberal, purposeful, enabling life for all humans that exceeds the mere struggle for survival. I think of this article as a reminder to appreciate things that are so incredibly important, even if they tend to go unnoticed day to day. Stop and smell the victory of technology over struggle and disease and discomfort and starvation.