Luddism might be justified; at the same time, though, there seem to be potentially transient facts (like low productivity in the developing world) which may explain the problem. I'd also like to lean on them as an example: their lot is the result of being outside the factory system, which takes non-factory humans and produces factory workers with high productivity (cf. Hanson on same). It seems plausible that programming, etc. has that same feature now, so it's not as if we've never done this before. We've done it at least twice (agriculture, factories).
Latest in an irregular series, some of whose previous entries were Edge.org and the Girl Scouts...
I examine the Folding@home distributed computing project with reference to the costs (electricity resulting in air pollution causing deaths) and benefits (some papers): http://www.gwern.net/Charity is not about helping. Additional data on either side of the cost-benefit is welcome.
(I also recently split out my essay describing things I have changed my mind on.)