Gates Issues Call For "Creative Capitalism"

theodp writes "Bill Gates makes his case for Creative Capitalism in TIME, citing projects like a Text-Free UI for illiterate computing, the use of Multimouse technology to allow fifty kids to share one computer display, cell phone billing by the second, and Bono's RED campaign as examples of the type of corporate creativity that can make the world a better place for the billion or so people scraping by on less than a dollar a day. Michael Kinsley, a former Microsoft employee whose wife still advises the Gates Foundation, says it's hard to object to Gates' goals, but notes that creative capitalism does have its share of skeptics, and points out that there was not a whole lot of energy devoted to lifting up the world's poor during Bill's three decades at Microsoft."

Text-free UI?

There's prior art on that. It was invented in ancient Egypt.

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

Re:Text-free UI?

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

When you can't even count on the user/operator to have an 8th grade education, a dozen pictures is worth far more than 12,000 words.

WTF is this "education" worship going on?

I've had to correct memos written by people with "degrees", not just that mythical 8th grade education. Know what? I've met 8th graders from that evil third world where they supposedly can't get by on a dollar a day. Strangely, they also can write coherent sentences... they even know the difference between "they're" and "their". Something most college grads seem to not know. Too bad you can't fire people (lovely government interventions) for having been too stupid to get value for their money when they shopped for "education".

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

Good to know that education is defined by how well you can write a bureaucratic memo, not how well you think critically, problem solve, general knowledge or how to work as a team. No, no, we want drones that all think the same and use proper grammar.

Because using proper grammar naturally leads to "thinking the same", right?

Darwin used proper grammar. So did Jefferson. So did Martin Luther King, Jr -- and many other people who thought very differently, and actually had a big impact on the world.

Can you guess why?

It's about communication. It doesn't matter if you have all the ideas in the world if you can't communicate them. And it's kind of essential to "working as a team", also -- how can you work with a team if you can't understand them?

It certainly isn't making it easy for your teammates if they are wincing every time they have to read an email from you -- or if your code is awesome, but your comments are unreadable.

And you know what else? It's not that fucking hard. Even if it is stupid, and unnecessary, it's a simple barometer. It means you know how to pay attention in school, and learn things, even if it's not something you want to learn. It means you actually care what people think of you.

Misusing "they're" may have nothing directly to do with coding, but it is somewhat like showing up for an interview without a shirt. Depending on the job, it might not disqualify you, but you'd better be wearing some damned nice pants. (Apologies to "Persuit of Happyness".)

And it's far easier just to throw on something resembling a suit.

Re:Text-free UI?

640 words should be enough for anyone.

Re:Text-free UI?

Yeah, so let's get access to some of that text.

Project: Open Source System for automatic user-initiated translation of blogs/articles/etc. Add a "Read this in:" which is autotranslated to location (GeoIP, etc) and a "Translate this". Basic idea being ad-sharing as payment for translating blogs. Open Source project, because I mainly just want to see more content out there, and translated content is great. Wiki-based.

From the user's point of view: You enter a page, and see it in English. You're quite good at English in addition to Chinese, so you write a quick translation.

Speaking of ancient Egypt

Speaking of ancient Egypt and writing, it's kinda funny... they actually invented a phonetic writing (hieratic) _before_ hieroglyphics, but preferred hieroglyphics anyway.

It's kinda funny how many things about Egypt are contrary to what we take for granted, and what stuff like Civilizations teach us. We tend to think that inventing an alphabet was oh-so-vital and a major improvement over hieroglyphics, but Egypt invented them the other way around. And for a long time it was, along with Mesopotamia (where cuneiform was also hieroglyphic), at the forefront of science and technology.

(Another anomaly about them was that they knew about coins all right, but preferred barter anyway. They first minted coins to pay some Greek mercenaries, and then continued to do so for external trade with the Greeks and Phoenicians. But internally they used barter until the Romans conquered them and forced them to. They were an economic powerhouse anyway.)

So, well, maybe there is something to the idea that a picture is worth more. The Egyptians sure thought so :P

Re:Speaking of ancient Egypt

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was largely phonetic, contrary to what is surprisingly common belief here. Some signs were logographic or ideographic, but the majority of signs were phonetic. Hieratic came after hieroglyphic, and was largely just a cursive form of hieroglyphics, used to write quickly in informal contexts. In any case, Egyptian used a far smaller set of signs than modern Japanese, which is also a mixture of phonetic, logographic, and ideographic signs. Alphabetic writing probably originated in the Levant as a simplification of Egyptian monoconsonantal signs, culminating in the Phoenician alphabet, which formed the basis of virtually all modern scripts of non-Chinese origin.

Currency was simply unnecessary through most of Egyptian history. Ancient Egypt was a command economy and the overwhelming majority of its trade was internal. Under those circumstances, at least in a pre-industrial state, currency is a needless complication.

Re:Text-free UI?

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

Indeed, this is related to text-based computing in a very direct way. Shell scripting (like all programming) is the practice of describing to the computer exactly what you want it to do—word for word, so to speak. Graphic UIs, for all their advantages, don't let the user give such specific instructions, forcing them to perform the individual steps themselves: click that file, move it here, click that file, move it there, executing the algorithm yourself instead of describing to the computer. Like the summary says, "illiterate computing" pretty much nails it on the head.

Not that I'm bashing GUIs or saying that anyone who uses one is non-metaphorically "illiterate". Good GUIs are obviously indispensable in modern software, and with good reason. But they can never fully replace the expressive abilities of the command line. To swing back on-topic, a fully graphical UI for people who really are fully illiterate is a noble idea, but considering the limitations of a normal GUI, it would suffer serious drawbacks, to say the least.

The literacy metaphor in comparing text-based and graphical interfaces is explored very nicely in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" [cryptonomicon.com] by Neal Stephenson.

Creative Capitalism

That's a synonym for Open Source, Mr Gates.

Re:Creative Capitalism

Funny thing about 'creative capitalism'.. Bill Gates owns one of the larger image banks on the internet right now. Unfortunately the current laws which allow the creative individuals who make money off their artwork on those image banks are costing Mr. Gates a portion of money (what with them owning the rights to their own work). SO he's currently one of the voices trying to get the copyright laws changed so any non-registered creative works become orphaned if their creators don't watch over them like a hawk (the current laws copyright everything by default and you don't have to pay money for it). If the law is changed all the works on those image banks will lose their copyright and Mr. Gates will be able to turn a profit on them, while all the creative people learn a hard lesson in capitalism.

Re:Creative Capitalism

That's not capitalism. That's using government to get what you want by force.

Re:Creative Capitalism

If the law is changed all the works on those image banks will lose their copyright and Mr. Gates will be able to turn a profit on them, while all the creative people learn a hard lesson in capitalism.

Thats no reason to question the sincerity of a man on a mission to relieve poverty while dressed in a $10,000 Armani suit.

I always wondered what a Billion dollar Bill looks like.

needs a logo

I think the only way a Gates innovation like "Creative Capitalism" will really take off is if it has a nice logo to indicate when something is Creative Capitalism compliant. I suggest two lowercase C's in a circle.

Gotta monetize it

MS is obsessed with monetizing everything. Creative Capitalism is just their answer to Creative Commons, and Open Source. Public Domain they don't care much about because they can at least charge for access to the content or a conversion of the content depending on the platform.

"It is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor. "

He means money, not skill, and if you are trying to help the poor, then you have to give them a way to survive despite not having money, not a way to keep depending on money and make that dependence even stronger. Who knows, maybe they are just interested on getting poor countries up to getting an economy going just so it's a new place to put up a toll booth or a new culture to start selling Windows to every hear, and if they develop these markets then they will start funneling money towards MS or at least not investing time/energy/mindshare in OSS.

The OLPC may not have succeeded with its goals but it at least had the right philosophy: Start making the third world independent and self sufficient, get people to discover and collaborate on their strengths, and to build themselves up without reliance on those who are already self sufficient. For developing countries it is very important to come up independent so others don't come in and take advantage of you whenever you have gained any amount of wealth. It's a lot harder to be taken advantage of, and you also have more bargaining power in the world forum, if you are independent.

Re:Gotta monetize it

You have completely missed the point. I'm guessing you just read the title, not even the summary! This is not Bill Gates speaking on behalf of Microshaft, this is Bill Gates speaking on behalf of good conscience, one of the greatest foundations in existence, and a complete understanding of the corporate world.

We'd all love to give money to help the world, but we all also happen to want/need it as well. It's hard for businesses to give money away because their job, their entire purpose, is to make it for themselves.

Take the example of the RED campaign, as given up-top. They managed to sell something (absurd, imho) that people buy, thereby making more money (and, presumably, problems) for them and their stockholders, but meanwhile a portion of all the profits goes to AIDS work.

That is Creative Capitalism.

Gates understands that you can't just throw money at a problem, you need to create a project that is beneficial for all parties involved. He's suggesting we do more for ourselves by helping others.

Re:Gotta monetize it

Say what you will about bill gates and M$, but the man has donated a fuckton of his money to make the world a better place(Malaria cures, anyone?)

Has he done the world more good giving away his money than he did in the process of earning it? Think about that one for a while.

lets be honest now

People scraping by on less than a dollar a day aren't going to be interested in anything like this.

Ordinary priorities like eating, keeping a roof over their heads and trying not to get sick and die are likely to be far more important.

Also, with all due respect to his charitable efforts, for which, if for little else, I respect him, what does he, as one of the richest men in the world, think he's doing saying what people in abject poverty want?

I'd venture a guess that what they want is for a persons worth and entitlement to the basics of life to be unrelated to money.

If we can afford to pour billions into a shallow fight to control Oil, We can afford to make life's basics free for anyone who asks.

Re:lets be honest now

If we can afford to pour billions into a shallow fight to control Oil, We can afford to make life's basics free for anyone who asks.

I certainly agree with your sentiments, but the truth is that we can't afford to. There are simply too many people and there isn't enough wealth in the world. Capitalism's main problem is that it doesn't distribute wealth equitably. But it IS great at generating wealth. This was a main point Gates made in the article. But it isn't enough. We aren't wealthy enough, and the growth of wealth in our global economy is not enough to keep pace - even in theory - with past or present population growth to carry everyone forward adequately (i.e. with a standard of living acceptable by modern western standards) even if all wealth was distributed evenly. The easiest proof of this comes from the well-known study that showed if everyone one Earth consumed the same resources as the average American, we would need 3 Earths to generate the basic inputs of materials and energy - clearly an impossibility.

My field of expertise happens to be international development, and one of the issues that has recently become impolitic to mention is population growth. We used to more openly recognize population growth as a major problem. Not so much now - you can conjecture why if you like. Regardless, population is and will continue to be the major obstacle standing in the way of broad-scale socioeconomic and environmental sustainability. There are just too many people.

As one quick example, I worked in the Middle East for a number of years in several countries that were really close to an ideal development scenario: the governments had tons of money thanks to oil and low initial populations. It was basically a blank slate with a blank check - fantastic! Build roads here, power plants there, schools here, hospitals there. And things have gone really very well. But rather than enjoy a GDP per capita of something like $20,000, those countries now have GDP/c of something under $5,000. Why? Because Islam forbids birth control just like Catholicism, and the populations are growing at 15-25% annually.

Re:lets be honest now

Ordinary priorities like eating, keeping a roof over their heads and trying not to get sick and die are likely to be far more important.

And what if they already have a roof and enough food? Or do you think that there are only two groups of people, starving people and people who have plenty and can easily pay for a new PC every year.

This is basicaly the stage of 'learning a man to fish' instead of giving him a fish.

Here [wikipedia.org] a smaple of a multi seat solution which still requires multiple monitors and costs 50% of what they would pay normaly. Now imagine removing 50% of the monitors, so that students have to work together on one monitor.

Not only will this cause a drop in price, it will cause kids to work together and learn social skills at the same time and will learn what they need to learn better, because of the interaction with other kids.

So this could benefit kids in shools everywhere, including the rich kids.

Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal

Every time there is a discussion about the Gates foundation, someone will predictably stand up and say that Gates is not a philanthropist because his actions as Microsoft CEO were not consistently philanthropic.

I don't look to commercial corporations to be philanthropists. A commercial corporation is a voluntary collective of investors who want to maximize their financial investment. That's OK with me. If that investment is maximized then some of the individual investors will see a personal calling to use that money for philanthropy. This is what you see happening to Gates today. That is genuine and real. Corporate philanthropy, on the other hand, is most often a flim flam exercise in repairing ill will so the corporation will restore its ability to generate lots of revenue.

So, give Gates a break. He's hugely rich. Now he's getting older and perhaps he has become more reflective about making a difference in the lives of people less fortunate than him. I'm not going to bust his balls for that.

Not Surprising

A long-time practitioner of "creative bookkeeping" and "creative business practices" advocates "creative capitalism." What a shocker.

I'm sure mob bosses would rather people call murder "creative surgery" too.

The big opportunity for capitalism: solar

When you invest in solar, you can very likely get your money back and then some(if you invest in profitable solar companies). The key is solar is great to be corporate because corporations have a way to pushing things to their saturation point. Solar has no saturation point as long as there are stars in the universe. But for right now, we should at least be looking to capitalize on Earth's potential.

Once we have abundant energy on Earth through Solar, we can use it in electric or hydrogen vehicles. With electric vehicles, we can transport the energy from one plant or another with only using human labor or electric trains. Once you have "free energy" powering vehicles, the cost of transportation gets less. When the cost of transportation gets less, the cost of food and water gets less. Also "free energy" by the coast can turn salt water into drinking water then vehicles can transport them inland.

Right there, you just made an impact on many poor peoples' lives without actually donating any money. I think any geek who wants to use technology to solve the world's problems should look inward into conserving money so they can buy stock in profitable solar. I think you should do your research into different companies. I've found mine: nanosolar.com. The only problem is that they haven't gone public yet. So I save money. I'm pretty much broke, but at least I got the spirit of it all.

How many people could Bill feed?

If they just ate him.

Re:cell phone by the second

It's about time that cell phone companies introduce per second billing, but this is not going to happen anytime soon as it is a major part of their business... and fat profits.

They bill per second in the UK (e.g. Orange [orange.co.uk], O2 [o2online.ie])