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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