Should governments spend money on computer technology or more basic needs? Many people believe that governments should spend as much money as possible on developing or buying computer technologies, while others think that governments should spend money on more basic needs While spending both on computer technologies and on basic needs of society are important, I think that government should concentrate on the latter Computer technologies are not very good investment from point of view of society as a whole, while investment in essentials has a much higher rate of return Investment in areas related to computer software, networks and hardware are not very profitable and will not improve life of ordinary citizens Several years ago many thought that by investing in computer-related fields we can improve performance across the board, but reality proved to be much more complex Most of Internet companies, dot- coms, went bankrupt Although huge money was poured in those companies, they even were not able to support themselves The promise of improved performance also has never come true But we have more than 20 million people who live below poverty line in the United States, the most powerful and prosperous country in the world More than third of the earth population live on less than one dollar a day - official threshold of poverty declared by United Nations We can greatly improve life of those people by investing in public education, organizing small business loan agency or other project that can help to alleviate poverty What`s more, computers can actually make this problem worse, because they make inefficient to produce anything by bare hands - so making most of world`s uneducated population obsolete and without means to sustain themselves Analysts expect that in several decades more than third of population will not have access to clean water This can leave famine, bad public health and other disasters Some argue that we will have wars for access to clean water To prevent this scenario we need to invest large amount of money in projects that will help to save clean water on our planet In conclusion I want to say, that investment in computers will not solve a single problem of our society Computer will not prevent famines, which are so usual today, or help poor people On the contrary computers can leave poor blue-collar workers without work and money to support their families So governments around the world should spend all available money on basic necessities of our society, not on some dream projects