When engineers design and build products for people, they often have to visualize the customer using that product. When they put themselves in the shoes of the user, engineers are mostly detached from the emotional or human part of the user and just visualize the machine/ user interaction. But sometimes engineers let the emotional part seep in and consider how lives are affected by what they create.
That’s what happened to me when designing my first micro inverter. It was purposely designed for the six hundred million people in Sub Saharan Africa who have no access to electricity. My thoughts weren’t just focused on the use of the inverter for pumping water or tool use. I could not shake the visions of millions of babies in enclosed spaces, breathing the foul air emitted from fires used for lighting up the darkness or kerosene lamps spewing obnoxious black soot. Those babies won’t lead long, healthy, and productive lives. Many probably will never get out of childhood.
It is not unreasonable to then think of yourself on a mission to use technology to save a million a babies’ lives. What nobler use of technology than to save millions babies?
When I heard that programs designed by the U.S. to support the health and well being of millions of desperately poor people was decimated and could cause the death of a million babies in developing nations , I damned near wept.
The balance scale comes to mind. On one side the benevolent force of technology weighing in on the side of saving babies from early death from pollution and on the other side the malevolent force of callous, indifferent, and evil actions of wealthy and powerful people that medical journals say will likely kill millions of suffering people.
The scale has bottomed out on that evil side, but I believe in karma and think that the perpetrators’ cruel actions will not go unnoticed by the gods of kismet. I also believe in technology as a force for good and in the long run will uplift those peoples’ lives in Africa and that they will be able to use those tools to create a better life for their babies.
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