Perhaps in a meager attempt at an excuse for lavishing myself with the latest tech toys, I’m going to use the next few posts to extoll many of the benefits of technology in our modern world. My focus will be on the church, philanthropy, and political freedom.
Today I’ll start with something that has definitely become vital in the past week. Texting.
The infamous dominant form of communication for tweens that is destroying the English language. Bane of safe driving advocates. Texting has evolved from just a new way to say hello to an integral facet of society. At first critics asked why text a person when you could just as easily call them with the phone you’re using. Answer? It allows people to easily and quickly communicate a short message to multiple recipients. Coupled with services like Twitter, a message can quickly spread from one person to all over the world. We saw this last summer when it was ordinary citizens with mobiles, not mainstream media, that brought us the news from within Iran [there will be more on that later]
Another obvious and beneficial use it fundraising. I’ve had this article planned for over a month. Two weeks ago I was at Passion 2010 conference in Atlanta. One of the charity projects supported there had a goal of raising $25,000. During one of the main sessions Louis Giglio gave everyone a number to text in order to donate $5. We ended up raising over $75,000. I was excited at such an awesome use of technology for good. Little did I know just two weeks later that would be blown out of the water. After the earthquake in Haiti, the Red Cross asked people to text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10. As of the writing of this article, more than $8 million has been donated in just 5 days.
I finally decided to give for earthquake in Haiti. I suggest that people send money to those devastated by Haiti’s disaster as well.