Bill Gates: Internet Will Not Save the World

quantr points out an interview with Bill Gates in which he talks about setting priorities for making a difference in the world. Quoting: "The internet is not going to save the world, says the Microsoft co-founder, whatever Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley's tech billionaires believe. But eradicating disease just might. Bill Gates describes himself as a technocrat. But he does not believe that technology will save the world. Or, to be more precise, he does not believe it can solve a tangle of entrenched and interrelated problems that afflict humanity's most vulnerable: the spread of diseases in the developing world and the poverty, lack of opportunity and despair they engender. 'I certainly love the IT thing,' he says. 'But when we want to improve lives, you've got to deal with more basic things like child survival, child nutrition.' These days, it seems that every West Coast billionaire has a vision for how technology can make the world a better place. A central part of this new consensus is that the internet is an inevitable force for social and economic improvement; that connectivity is a social good in itself. It was a view that recently led Mark Zuckerberg to outline a plan for getting the world's unconnected 5 billion people online, an effort the Facebook boss called 'one of the greatest challenges of our generation.' But asked whether giving the planet an internet connection is more important than finding a vaccination for malaria, the co-founder of Microsoft and world's second-richest man does not hide his irritation: 'As a priority? It's a joke.'"

Comments

Re:Bill is doing the right things

[ShanghaiBill]

But no, better to hand out fish then give access to fishing instructions.

Maybe so. There is a very interesting article in this week's Economist Magazine that compared different methods of helping the poor. One of the most effective is "Unconditional Cash Transfers" or UCTs, that basically just hand out cash to poor families in Africa. This was surprisingly effective, because these poor families knew what they needed a lot better than the aid agencies, and there was so little overhead that nearly all the money went to the people in need rather than being eaten up by overhead and administration. There were a few limitations: the UCTs worked better when they went to women rather than men, and CCTs (Conditional Cash Transfers) that required children to attend school were found to have better long term results than UCTs. But otherwise, UCTs and CCTs were more effective than nearly any other charity scheme.

Knowledge is power.

Indeed. But your mistake is assuming that you have it and the poor people don't.