Why Earth and Humanity are Doomed

Normally, I’d be looking for some news to write up right now. But during Chinese New Year, there really isn’t any, so instead, let’s take a second to talk about how we’re all doomed. Dooooomed!

OK, that might be a bit of an overstatement. But maybe it’s not. This morning, given the lack of news, I was browsing 17Startup looking for a new startup to check out, and was struck by just how few tech startups there are working in the public interest rather than for profit. If you’re looking for more informative graphs about how startups in China break down, you should check this post out right away. But for our purposes, this is the only graph that matters:

Ouch. Out of over three thousand startups, only eleven are working on issues of public interest? That’s grim. You can hardly walk outside these days without tripping over a serious problem — pollution, poverty, crime, educational disparity, etc. etc. — and China’s best tech minds are engaged in building e-commerce platforms and mobile social networks (the two biggest categories on 17Startup)? Yeah, we’re doomed.

Now, admittedly, I’m being a bit unfair. First of all, this is not exclusively a Chinese problem. My guess is a chart of almost any country’s startups would be equally grim. Secondly, that chart doesn’t account for for-profit companies in other categories that are also trying to solve real problems (they’re rare, but they do exist, although the one I just linked is in Laos, not China).

Also, here I am working at a for-profit startup myself. I do think spreading news and helping people understand China’s tech scene is important (obviously), but I’ll admit that my work here probably isn’t going to save any rainforests or increase the education rate in rural areas.

So sure, I’m a big hypocrite, but I still find this depressing. I do think that many of these problems could benefit from the brainpower that’s currently getting applied to, ahem, bullshit like starting yet another e-commerce site. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Does China (or the world) really need another way to buy things? Another mobile social networking platform everyone can ignore? Really?

I can’t help but think that if some of the brainpower being applied to this stuff was being applied to issues like how to ensure kids in rural areas can get a good education, the world might be better off. Of course, good programming and design skills can’t solve any problem — it’d be bit unfair of me to suggest the social network programmer should be using her skills to stop crime, for example — but there are plenty of things the world could use an app for. And I think there are creative tech solutions to plenty of real world problems waiting out there for programmers with hearts bigger than the perceived holes in their wallets.

Of course, there does need to be a balance. Everyone needs food, clothing, shelter, etc. But we don’t all need to be millionaires, and it is entirely possible to make a decent living working for a non-profit organization, or a for-profit organization that looks to solve real problems rather than just making millions. A billion dollars might be cool, but isn’t a better world cooler? I don’t know, maybe it’s not. But I wish more people were bothering to look into it.