Developer and Social Activism

How small contribution using technology can makes big difference 

Hello World!!! For past one year i was thinking of writing blog but “Procrastination” and “Laziness” not allowed me to do so. But after making strong friendship with “determination” here i am with my my first blog.

We are“developer” not a social activist. So what’s our role to play in social activism? It’s seems weird at first but if you put aside social activism context away from “politics” then you can realise that i am talking social activism for making this world a more better world to live for others, i am talking about social activism using technology for healthcare, education and environment.

How can a developer be part of Social Activism? First of all developers are already part of it yours every line of code is transforming someone’s life including yours. I was also intrigued by this question many times that “Why social activism thrives me and why we need it at large level?” Still today i never found out how to proceed for it and be part of “dev” social activism untill i made a 3-D educational game “Magus Mundus” for children during my internship at IPTSE organised by Carnegie Mellon University. There i learnt how these contributions can make a difference in life of the children who will play it. He will learn new things without actually knowing that. So let have a round-off of case study of “Children’s Education in India”. Today in India around 75% of children do not have proper education (being able to write own’s name is not considered as Education). The reason is there is increasing population, no proper infrastructure and finally no good teachers to teach them, we can also blame goverment for this. So what will happen in coming future if India doesn’t address this problem? Then the population which would have been an asset to this nation will become threat. So what’s the solution for these problem?

There are many solutions for each problem but we developer are smart so we would pick smart solution like IBM, for every problem. Educational Games is one of it that can help us to educate children with no infrastructure, no teachers and with very low cost. If we developers can make games which will lead children to learn and can transform their life. These small contribution can have impact on millions children life’s. We developer know “how to do”, “What to do” and “When to do” . So with the same ideology with little bit of social inclination can bring innovative solutions for these big problems.

At last contribute to “dev” social activism so that we can have hope in unprivileged one’s that they would be the future “dev” social activist.

Cheers!