> a hierarchy of insight
Absolutely, there's a joke on journalism that newsworthiness = death / distance. Evolutionarily that makes a lot of sense, for immediate selfish reasons it makes sense to pay attention to that which directly impacts you.
The tragedy here is that we're not really very moral creatures. Somehow when we see a child drowning in a nearby pond, we jump in, despite ruining our smartphone, expensive watch and new jordans in the process worth $1000 together, to save the kid.
And if we ask someone 'would you do it again, knowing it'd cost you $1000 of your stuff', they'd smile 'of course'. We celebrate this, and we call them heroes, and when we tell them they're a hero they smile 'anyone would have done it'. And if it was a boat, and 100 children were in the water, we'd still go in and save as many as possible, even if you're alone and can only save 3 kids.
But when we are presented with data that $60 can save a child from a painful death through the purchase of Malaria nets, we say no. We come up with many reasons. One is cost, people can't afford the $60. (Note in the previous example someone was willing to pay $1k to save nearby child). We might say there's too much suffering, we can't solve the problem. (Note in the previous example, someone would be killing to save even a few, as every life counts).
Technology could play a role. The big internet utopia is that we're all connected, and the world becomes a smaller place, a world in which everyone is a neighbour we care for. To a small extent that can be achieved. It seems we give more to our overseas allies, friends and those with historical ties. France is more prone to give to an Algerian earthquake than one in Tunisia, due to colonial, cultural, political, historical ties, for example. So cultural exchange through technology can help bring us closer, but only on a macro-level.
More specifically, we're seeing blogging slowly take off. You know how CNN etc now have twitter feeds, and a portion of the news is reported by citizens? That'll take off everywhere, as publishing (blogging, vlogging, tweeting etc) becomes easier and cheaper. That may shorten the distance between the needy and those with disposable resources, a role normally suited for NGOs that try to bridge the gap. Storytelling, reporting, data collection etc will become cheaper and easier, and that affects people's willingness to give.
> If you're directly, immediately impacted by someone else's misfortunes you're going to want to do something about them.
Indeed, although I don't really have any clue how technology could achieve it, or if we'd even want to. For now there's the correlary, which is that as countries become richer, natural family planning occurs and the birthrate goes down. The tendency for illicit outlets (like crime and indeed terrorism, e.g. check out the movie Horses of God) decrease. The level of education increases. Look at China, suddenly we get 300m extra middle-classish people whose children go to school. The point here is that rising tides lift all boats. And all ideas (and thereby all knowledge), Chinese ideas or otherwise, are like a candle, you can light someone else's candle without diminishing your own. So while I may not be hurt if a country is poor, I look forward to a country's development, as it benefits me, too. I hope that becomes a slightly bigger element in our rhetoric on things like national security, because we could partially displace military action with more international development.