He was certain technology would save the world. Here’s what changed his mind.

For a long time Kentaro Toyama was a believer in technological utopianism. He studied physics at Harvard and earned a PhD in computer science at Yale. Toyama went on to do research at Microsoft. The work was demanding, but something was missing. “At the end of the day, I was helping to make better gadgets for wealthy people who could afford to play video games,” Toyama told me. In 2004, when his boss asked if he was interested in opening a research center in India, Toyama accepted on the spot. He’d never even been to India. But he was hungry to make more of a direct contribution to society.

Here was the chance to sprinkle tech fairy dust on a developing nation and watch success after success. Except it didn’t play out like that. Toyama spent five years in India with a team of about 10 and hatched about 50 projects. He found the projects that had a real social impact were ones in which he worked with capable organizations that were committed to their mission. Good schools with strong administrators were places where successes happened. But if he was working with an incapable nonprofit or corrupt organization, it didn’t matter how good his technology was. He sees attempts by Google and Facebook to spread Internet access around world as misguided. Giving the Internet to someone who doesn’t have vaccinations or clean water isn’t going to make them wealthier.