10% and Useful Shit

“A billion customers in the world,” Dr. Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors recently, “are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses, a $10 solar lantern and a $100 house.”

The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.

“We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,” he said.

The previous excerpt is from a recent article published in the New York Times titled Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor. These are the types of projects one day I hope to take on — designing and creating shit that can actually make a difference, things that can change the way we live and think on an everyday basis.

But the article also made me reflect on how I think about larger, seemingly hopeless issues like world poverty and hunger. I think when people bring up the notion of alleviating or changing the current conditions, they get written off as over-indulgent idealists, hippie dreamers, told that one person can never change the world. Damn hippies.... But that's not the point. Each of these design projects approached improving one aspect of life, on the most simple level, and often succeeded. And by slowly addressing these smaller issues, eventually, those larger, seemingly untouchable issues don't seem so out of reach.

Most of the designers interviewed were dead set against charity, making the point that these people don't need meals or clothes for the day, or even the week. They need means of making and producing these things for themselves, on an everyday basis. It's like that old proverb about fishing. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day etc, etc.

For all the millions and millions of dollars raised in charity, people are still hungry, homeless, and generally poor as fuck. By virtue of writing and reading this blog, we belong to that 10% of the population. The First World has long since lost its taste for revolution. Shit, I love wine labels and Maseratis as much as anybody else. But maybe we can at least start thinking about more fishing poles.



Read the full article at the link below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/science/29cheap.html?em&ex=1180670400&en=b0c061f37f5f0826&ei=5087%0A