What do you get when you combine a music superstar; with a heart and soul, along with two women with a strong belief they can make a change?

You get a social circle that is affecting hundreds of people in dire need every day when no-one else cares beyond mouthing empty platitudes. This powerful circle of singer Jon Bon Jovi, Sister Mary Scullion and Joan Dawson McConnon through their organization Project H.O.M.E. in Philadelphia have made an everlasting change among the homeless of that city. They rightly deserve all the kudos that come their way, but why is it that a musician can make such an impact and yet the whole technology sector is rarely; if ever, seen to care about the society that made them all rich.

Instead they would rather outsource as much as they possibly can, endangering the social stability of those people who have been replaced by cheaper labor so that the shareholders can cash their checks and more billions can be added to the corporate coffers. Instead they would argue for increasing HB1 visas so they can reduce their labor costs and not encourage or help improve our own educational systems. Instead they would rather build foreign research and development centers instead of helping our own country to increase its lead in the global economy.

And in the shadows of all this technological gluttony there exists a whole section of our society that either has no warm home to call their own or they live a life of bare existence on the razor’s edge of the poverty line. They are the people who serve you that latte as you discuss your hundreds of million dollar evaluations of your startup. They are the people who clean you offices so you have a clean place to work. They are those people who you can’t look in the eye as they cower over a heat vent just trying to stay warm.

This treatment of those that are homeless or living on; or below, the poverty line is disgusting. While we all gather around mouthing empty platitudes as we suck back cocktails at some conference or unconference the reality is what isn’t being said. Things like the attitude that it is somehow their fault. They have no ambition or just want to live off of the system; and there is nothing you can say that will convince me otherwise because that is my life. I see those condescending look every time some-one finds out you are living on a fixed income of some sort or another. I have heard the whispered comments from people passing by a local food bank.

So while the blogosphere blathers on about whether Kindle is cool or not, whether Facebook should give back control of our data that they are pimping for billions of dollars, whether it is social networks or social graphs, or how they spent $20,000 a year on Apple products there is a child somewhere in your own city that will go hungry tonight, there is a waitress living in fear her and her child will be evicted to live homeless, there will be some person cowering in some doorway wondering what the hell happened to their dreams.

How is it that people like Bon Jovi can make such a difference and yet with all our social network bullshit the technology sector as a whole can sit on billions of dollars and yet can’t be bothered to make a difference. If this is what the whole new social networking is all about count me out.

Listening to: Eric Clapton/J.J. Cale - The Road to Escondido - It’s Easy

Conversation Tags: social responsibility, social networks, technology