Many of those things only affect a tiny minority of, relatively speaking, incredibly rich people though. They will have knock on effects for the rest of the world, especially in the long term, but I submit that there are other events in human history that affected everyone on the planet at once, or at least very quickly.
An example would be plastic water piping for sanitation, as mentioned in my other comment.
I would also count the start of the Nuclear Age with the bombing of Hiroshima as something that affected almost everyone on earth by completely rebalancing the international political structure.
I'm not incredibly rich and many of those things have had a huge impact on my life. My brother surviving stage IV cancer, for example. Being able to build a business with nothing more than a domain name and a programming book, etc.
If things keep moving as fast as they are, then my guess is that the trickle down effects will...well...trickle faster.
In global terms, you are incredibly rich. If you have ever owned a domain name or a programming book you are incredibly rich.
Around half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day[1]. If you have one dollar a day that you can afford to waste on something you don't need to live, you're in something like the top ten or twenty percent of the world's richest. Sorry, I don't have a source for that last one, although the figure could likely be derived from the stats here:
Right, but we're talking about innovation, not sociological issues, and I'm not ashamed to be given the opportunity to be on the forefront of that.
The best way for me, as an entrepreneur, to help those less fortunate is to make more money so I can build greater things, and that's at the core of the innovation we're seeing here.
An example would be plastic water piping for sanitation, as mentioned in my other comment.
I would also count the start of the Nuclear Age with the bombing of Hiroshima as something that affected almost everyone on earth by completely rebalancing the international political structure.