Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged around $4 billion to medical research, with a lofty goal in mind: they want to cure, prevent, or manage all disease by the end of the century.

And they're not the first big tech entrepreneurs to use some of their wealth to try and improve the health of the world.

The Bill Gates Foundation is another. Their goal is to eradicate malaria and they've pumped billions of Microsoft dollars into that.

Gates and Zuckerberg both came from nothing. Two very smart people who changed they way we live and made an enormous amount of money from it.

Tech companies have changed the way we live, they've opened up our world and I wonder if that, in part, is why we've become more aware of our privilege, if you like.

The world has become so much more visually accessible.

Once upon a time our worlds were shaped by rather dispassionate, BBC-style reports on the six o'clock news, or perhaps a photo or two in the newspaper about some far-flung crisis or natural disaster that had wrecked havoc on some poor souls.

Now we see it in real time and HD.

The little Syrian boy who's body washed up on the Turkish beach. The impact of a Japanese earthquake, or the Boxing Day Tsunami. The damage a hurricane can inflict on one of our neighbouring islands in the Pacific. The thousands of refugee families trudging towards Europe with a suitcase in one hand, and a toddler on their hip.

Story after story pops up on Facebook. Images are unavoidable on Instagram and Snapchat. Twitter tells us what's happening as it happens. And it's made our world smaller. On some level, I also think technology helps to humanise the world. People respond to a situation, conversations start up across platforms, and people and groups become mobilised.

And that, I think, has made us more empathetic.

In the latest rich list, the NBR said there'd been a significant rise in philanthropic acts. Some of our most wealthy, in this country, are engaged in charity work. And Spark has announced it will heavily subsidise home broadband services for families at risk of digital exclusion. It's a small charitable act, but an important one - and an example of the shift in corporate culture.

And so applause, I think for the tech sector for changing the way we live, and now for trying to improve how we live too.

It is a lofty goal of the Zuckerberg-Chan foundation and it is money very well spent – a truly remarkable act of philanthropy.