can programming be humanitarian?

can programming be used to improve the lives of people in the third world in the same way that food water and roads can? Or can software only be used in places that are already first world?

Software can only be used to make people's lives worse. Anything that seems otherwise is delusion proliferated by the almost sentient Google AIs, that's why web apping has gotten so popular. Every time you app, you're bringing the human race one step closer to extinction.

Software will be what brings about the end of humanity. It is the catalyst, and the finality.

Yes, but it is unlikely to happen.

Everyone with the will lack the talent to tackle such hard problems.
Some people with the talent are more interested in writing better fibs.
Everyone else with the talent is too busy making money working on problems for finance, oil, or the government.

For it to work would mean that all the corner rounding hipsters would need to stop wasting time liking `help feed African kids' posts on Facebook and pick up some books on industrial engineering, systems design, fundamental computer science theory, etc.... This is a long shot, because I routinely see them complain that things like calculus and linear algebra are too hard to be in CS programs and are useless. They are simply too anti-intellectual.

Conversely, the second group is too intellectual. They won't come down from the ivory tower long enough to dirty their hands with something like feeding niggers. That's okay, lots of theoretical progress has been made, and it by these that the field advances.

The third group's databases could be used for things like drone striking warlords or something, or their $100K/seat CAM software could be used to design things other than oil rigs, or the AI and analytics used to shave ¢0.01 off ever trade in the stock market could be used pretty much anywhere. But there is no money in that.

So, to answer your question realistically, no.

There should be research for cost effective power minimizing portable electronics with adhoc meshnet capabilities. The computers don't need to be powerful enough to run angry birds but they should be able to send and receive information, and play doom 2.

>>4
They'll have hardware backdoors, unless the CPUs are open source and (destructively) auditable, which violates cost effectiveness.

Therefore the project is doomed, and the world is going to hell.

>>5
Wiretapping all the niggers and sandniggers is not a good idea. They are prone to blow themselves up, so the suspicion is not unfounded, and it isn't as if they were ever free in the first place, so they have nothing to lose and lots of cheap electronics to gain.

>>6
*not a bad idea

>>7
No, you wrote it correctly the first time.