By Tim Chai
<[email protected]>

Give me one of today’s now ubiquitous touch screen phones, and I’ll immediately hand it back with the prompt (and sometimes scathing) reply of “I can’t use this.” I don’t understand and frankly don’t want to learn how to work all of today’s devices that are rolling out faster than the stock market’s up-and-down rollercoaster. More evidence of this? In my study room, there’s a huge box with a state-of-the-art 1080 dpi HDTV. My parents bought it several months ago, and it has, as of the end of March, failed to see the light of day. I’ve gotten through hundreds of weekends with my standard analog television that has the resolution of this school’s computers—okay, probably even worse—but it has never failed to broadcast my favorite shows.

In the HiLite room, the static in the air is all about Twitter (shameless promotion note: visit hilite.org to sign up for our Twitter feeds). For all of you who aren’t reading Wired magazine every month, Twitter is a social networking utility that allows family and friends—and complete strangers to be copletely honest—to stay connected in real time by “tweeting” status updates via text messages on mobile devices. At first, I thought to myself, “Great, another overindulgent service that creates no tangible or positive change in the community or the world in general.” I was totally wrong.

On Feb. 12, more than 200 international cities hosted a Twestival to bring Twitter communities together in an effort to raise money for charity: water, an organization dedicated to bringing clean, renewable sources of fresh water to the 1.1 billion people around the world who are currently sharing their water supplies with parasites, animals and disease. Twestival was organized, with the aid of text message updates through Twitter, 100 percent by volunteers, and 100 percent of the money raised from these events around the world went directly to building reliable water wells for those living without this basic necessity. By rallying together even under an extremely short time scale, the Twestival brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis; the projected amount raised was $250,000—that’s 55 wells improving the livelihood of 17,000 people around the world.

Givology is another example of technology changing the world. Created as an online P2P community, Givology uses the basic concepts of microfinance to invest in the world’s most renewable resource, education. By leveraging the Internet, Givology can create a global community of people connected through their belief in the power of learning. Since its inception just half a year ago, Givology has grown tremendously, and its goals for the future, if successful, will change the model of education financing for decades to come.

As much as I hate companies like Twitter and Apple for introducing technologies that I have a slow learning curve with, I can no longer deny that these mediums will have an impact in global development for the future. As for me, I guess I’ll just have to stock up on phones with physical keys before they become extinct. Tim Chai is front page editor for the HiLite. Contact him at [email protected].