Opportunity, now starting at $10

It’s not everyday that I leave Safeway emotional.

$9.99.

The cost of an Android phone today, loaded with the Google Play store, a camera, Bluetooth and Wifi. For anyone who closely followed the One Laptop Per Child project over a decade ago, seeing something like that puts you in awe.

With so much difficulty in the world right now, it’s hard not to feel immense amount of despair — and so I wanted to share this photo along with a short message of hope.

The digital divide is a real struggle and will continue to be for decades to come but we’re closer to better bridging it now than we’ve ever been. Technology has allowed access to education and rich communication like never before and it is only getting better, cheaper and more accessible.

There is hope.

Hope that by starting to connect and share with each other, across borders and languages, the beautiful and the ugly moments around the world that these experiences will make us all better and hold us all to be more accountable.

There are many complex problems in the world and I’m not going to pretend that more access to digital devices will fix everything or even most things. But the reality is that there won’t be any one solution nor one group nor one movement that will fix all the problems either. There is value in finding hope in various bits of progress while still staying determined in areas that need change.

There are so many more reasons to be hopeful now more than ever before.