[TaffeyLewis]

"And yet at the same time it is a city notoriously plagued by poverty, crime, and political gridlock, all of which, like all problems, can be solved by the application of sufficient quantities of VC-funded smartphone apps and responsive websites built on Node.js and MongoDB."

When I read this line I thought the guy was some completely deluded silicon valley VC/tech junkie who'd never left the area to see the real world.. Took me a bit longer to realize the fairly decent satire.

The sad thing is that there really are a lot of people in tech who think like this article in some respects. They think that if you just through enough cool tech and apps at people anywhere, they'll just magically stop being the sometimes ignorant, deeply cruel or criminally minded humans they are.

Like toomuchtodo said, most of the serious problems are people problems.

That said though, I think technology can be used to shape peoples incentives and choices so that even if we're partly broken as a species, changing needs and options made by technology will make us do things that lead to more peace and cooperation. Pretty basic idea, sort of like how industrialized agriculture made people stop having wars over food. (mostly)