[drodgers]

* Technical experts won't necessarily be good at teaching people to use technology, or helping to set up infrastructure in third world countries.

* Other people (eg. teachers) will be better-placed to teach technical expertise to people in the third world.

* Technology isn't necessarily the most valuable thing to people in the third world - often they need simple things like corrugated steel roofs, anti-parasitics drugs and malaria nets.

* Technical experts are the best people at creating technology (tautologically) and they'll be more productive at that than they would be at any other task (and more productive any anyone else would be at creating technology).

So the elegant, effective solution is to have technical experts apply their technical expertise where it's most needed, get paid as much as possible (while doing useful work) and donate a significant portion of their earnings to fund education and development experts (who would otherwise be doing something less valuable) to go to where they're needed and help poor people in whatever way they need help.

Sending technologists to the third world will do about as much good as sending academics to the farms. May it would be spiritually enriching for the technologists, but a lot of technology will go unbuilt and a lot of poor people will miss out on deworming pills because that money went to fund plane tickets.