> People that lack clean water usually don't have any use for wifi; if they had enough money for a wifi-enabled gadget, they'd probably spend it on clean water

> People that lack clean water usually don't have any use for wifi; if they had enough money for a wifi-enabled gadget, they'd probably spend it on clean water provisioning or other life-support needs. This is just empirically false. Esther Duflo teaches in her edx.org course on poverty, in one of the very first classes: "The first surprising finding: television is more important than food." Across geographies and cultures, poor people choose time and again to spend money on communication (as in tv and telephones) over nutrition. President of Bolivia Evo Morales, in an interview with Democracy Now, said in no uncertain terms: "Communication is a human right."[1] http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/18/an_hour_with_bolivian_president_evo http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/18/an_hour_with_bolivian...