Will the smartphone save us all?

From an interview with the author of "Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think."

The cellphone in your pocket is as powerful as a mid-'70s-era supercomputer for a minute fraction of the cost. These are the poorest people on Earth, the so-called bottom billion. We have renamed this group the “Rising Billion” because, thanks to the exponential spread of communication and information technologies (like the smartphone), these people are coming online for the very first time. Their voices, which have never before been heard, are suddenly joining the global conversation. Aided by these technologies, the Rising Billion are beginning to pull themselves out of poverty. They are already on their way to becoming a powerful and significant consuming segment of humanity, and many companies are rushing to develop ultralow-cost products to meet their needs. This effort will drive down the price of basic goods and services in a fashion that will benefit everyone. But the Rising Billion have also become a producing and consuming segment of humanity, generating new ideas, insights, products, and services that add to the overall wealth of Earth.

At a global level, the gap between wealthy nations and poorer nations continues to close. Across the board, we are living longer, wealthier, healthier lives. Certainly, there are still millions of people living in dire, back-breaking poverty, but using almost every quality-of-life metric available—access to goods and services, access to transportation, access to information, access to education, access to lifesaving medicines and procedures, means of communication, value of human rights, importance of democratic institutions, durable shelter, available calories, available employment, affordable energy, even affordable beer—our day-to-day experience has improved massively over the past two centuries.