The talk will be a collection of stories, illustrating the difficulties that arise when well-meaning people attempt to use technology to help the poor. I will describe some failures and some successes. At the end I will deduce from these examples some general rules that may help philanthropic enterprises to do good and to avoid doing harm to those they are trying to help. The talk will also include some reflections on the World Economic Forum which I attended in January in Davos, Switzerland. The main theme of the Forum was to steer the processes of economic globalization so as to share the benefits more equitably between rich and poor countries. A number of well-meaning efforts in this direction have not been notably successful.