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The world today is broken, unfair, and filled with far more sorrow and pain than any civilization should be forced to bear. A couple weeks ago, for example, my husband, my sister, and I drove past flags at half-mast for a shooting while ranting about the devastation in Afghanistan. We were wearing N-95 masks, scattered around the car like dismal memorials to COVID 19, to protect ourselves from the smoky air of fire-ravaged California.
Yet what gives me hope is that from front-line workers to students, from hardworking nonprofits to capitalist pharmaceuticals, people have stepped up to do their part to save the world. Millions of us. 2020 sucked, 2021 is barely better, but we? We are the greatest thing we know of in this bleak universe.
So I asked thirty of the people I work with to share what gives them hope and why they fight. Here is what they said.
Samiyah McDuffie, Human Resources Professional & Student. Washington, D.C., United States.
Working towards the betterment of your community, local or global, is the most human action one can take. We do not flourish out of selfishness or greed, but prosper from togetherness.
Gustavo Pabon, Senior Data Scientist at Microsoft. Colombia.
My father, who passed away last year, was someone that currently is known as an “early adopter.” We used to live in Cali, Colombia, and there, in the 80s, it was very uncommon for someone to have a personal computer. Only “early adopters” like my father had it. None at home knew how to use it, and why we needed it. We did not need it. But, my father and that IBM old PC defined my future. My father bought a book that explained how to program games in BASIC, I was like 8 years old, and spent like 16 hours per day in front of a 14 inch black and green screen. That led me to study software engineering, computer science and since 11 years ago data science.
It is a fact for me that humanity shapes technology, but also technology shapes our humanity. Technology has the power to destroy, but it also has the power to create. I joined Dweebs Eye…
