We live in a world of technological advance. The computer, the Internet, cell phones. For all practical purposes it seems we as a race are rapidly moving into a new era.

But this monumental leap forward is only apparent to me because I live in the industrialized world. Less than ten percent of the global population is online. Most people in the world have never used a telephone. The basic technologies I take for granted aren't even a dream to most people in the world. I own a cell phone that can take digital photographs and then post them to the internet. Yet there are over one billion people in the world who don't have safe water, and over two billion who don't have sanitation.

I lived in frustration waiting for high speed internet access at my house in Minneapolis, taking for granted that I had clean water to drink.