Fwd: [BRC-NEWS] Gates Loses Faith in Computers

>Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 22:59:37 -0500
>From: sananda@hotmail.com (Ruben Barrera Botello)
>Reply-To: letters@guardian.co.uk
>Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Gates Loses Faith in Computers
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>http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,393015,00.html
>
>The Guardian (UK)
>
>Sunday, November 5, 2000
>
>Gates Loses Faith in Computers
>
>They can't cure world's ills, admits Microsoft boss
>
>By Edward Helmore in New York and Robin McKie in London
>
>Microsoft boss Bill Gates has renounced the machine that has
>made him the world's richest man. In a startling proclamation, 
>Gates has announced that computers can do little to solve the 
>planet's gravest social ills.
>
>'The world's poorest two billion people desperately need 
>healthcare, not laptops,' he said.
>
>The declaration represents a major personal transformation
>for Gates, and has sent shockwaves through America's high-
>tech business community. Had the Pope renounced Catholicism,
>the surprise would not have been greater.
>
>Speaking in Seattle at a conference on using computers to
>help the Third World, Gates said he still had faith in the
>ideal that technology could bring about a better world, but
>added that he doubted that computers - or global capitalism
>- could solve the most immediate catastrophes facing the
>world's poorest people.
>
>People who thought that developing countries could benefit
>from the e-economy had no idea what it meant to live on $1 
>a day with no electricity, said Gates. 'You're just buying
>food; you're trying to stay alive.'
>
>The billionaire technologist became positively vitriolic
>about the idea of using computers in the Third World:
>'Mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and
>say, "My children are dying, what can you do?" They're not
>going to sit there and, like, browse eBay or something.
>
>'What they want is for their children to live. Do you really
>have to put in computers to figure that out?'
>
>For a man who has benefited more than anyone from the IT
>revolution, this reappraisal is extraordinary and comes
>after several months of growing disillusionment in Gates
>about the state of the planet, and the potential for
>technology to help it out of its current crisis.
>
>He confessed he had been 'naive - very naive' when he began
>giving away his fortune six years ago. At that time, he said, 
>he expected that computers and information technology would
>make up the bulk of his philanthropic donations. 'Computers
>are amazing in what they can do, but they have to be put
>into the perspective of human values,' he said.
>
>Having visited Africa and other Third World countries his
>priorities had now shifted, he said. At least two-thirds of
>the grants offered by the $21 billion Bill and Melinda Gates
>Foundation would now be devoted to Third World healthcare
>and the development and distribution of vaccines.
>
>In the past year the Gates Foundation has given more than
>$200 million to health-related causes, including $25m for
>the International Aids Vaccine Initiative, $50m to prevent
>maternal and child mortality, $20m for international family
>planning efforts and $100m towards children's vaccines. 'As
>a father of two children, thinking about the medicines that
>I take for granted which are not available elsewhere, that
>sort of rises to the top of the list.'
>
>These remarks have angered many of Gates's wealthy, hi-tech
>philanthropist counterparts. They say he has unfairly placed
>computers at odds with providing food and healthcare in
>developing countries. Others argue that Gates is wrong to
>think that technology cannot help improve even the poorest
>people's lives.
>
>'After listening to three days of serious analysis and work,
>and then to have Gates rather flippantly say, "You've got to
>have clean water and food" - that wasn't exactly furthering
>the point of the entire meeting,' said Sun Microsystems
>chief research officer John Gage, who heads Netday, a
>charity committed to wiring the world's classrooms to 
>the internet.
>
>Copyright (c) 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited.
>
>
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