Yesterday, President Obama hosted the leaders from the nations across Africa in a summit. What a dichotomy some of those leaders must have seen at the event. Coming from societies of abject poverty - ones filled with starvation, disease, low life expectancy, and lacking basic subsistence items like running water - they're now thrust into a society that ponders the wonders brought forth by the impending use of self-driving cars, electronic augmented memory, and life expanding medical techniques.
It is easy for us to live in the cocoon of our electronic life in 2014, with our mobile devices, our daily news blogs, our omni-connectedness, and all of the advantages these afford. Yet there are those that live in a completely different world - one so hard and ill-advanced that it looks something akin to something our forefathers' forefathers had to endure.
Yet, still they're there. In our hyper connected world, they're an eight hour plane ride away.
Eight hours. That's all it takes to go from the hubris our electronic comfort affords us and wondering if you're going to survive to live another day or not due to despotism, terrorism, disease, or lack of food or clean water.
Eight hours. Think about that the next time the barista screws up your latte order.
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