This quote is from an article that gives a cutting critique of Oxfam’s charity work around the recent events in Somalia. While the author cites more traditional development/charity projects, like Oxfam, I would say that this quote also stands for existing technology development projects that attempt to “free” people and “empower” people without understanding their lives first.

I’ve written about the Haystack Affair as a case where US policy on internet freedom lured hackers cum middle-class professional programmers to create self-indulgent campaigns for freeing the world from info censorship.

Another example are the misguided endeavors of One Laptop Per Child.  Morgan Ames and Mark Warschauer have written a wonderful article this topic. Morgan Ames has done extensive ethnographic research in S. America on the actual uses and consequences of deploying technology under such a guise of positive social change.