The only thing that can reduce poverty is spreading around the wealth to the poorer people. What is the good of giving a poor person a Powerbook or Thinkpad? Are they taking advice from Newt Gingrinch or something? A Powerbook for every homeless person, yeah right, like that would solve the homeless problem?

If anything using new technology will help improve the quality of life, but look at all the poor that the USA has and the technology we already have. Also look at Canada, and the people who live there, or other places that have the same tech the US has (or better) and still have a lot of poor people. Just throwing technology at a problem will not make it go away. You have to find out the root (cause) of the problem and then fix that to make it go away.