Gates Issues Call For "Creative Capitalism" 464
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."
Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Text-free UI? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
WTF is this "education" worship going on? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Text-free UI? (Score:1, Interesting)
Gotta agree with this one. Sorry, for all his ideas about creativity and innovations, the man just doesn't understand those words. Not surprising really since he stole ideas and call them innovations all his life. You really wanna help, Gates? Instead of providing a computer for illiterate people, why don't you start with the basic: invest in people to teach them how to read. In the long run, it will help them much more than knowing how to click on pictures as literacy helps them with non-computer stuff and let them read books so they can understand new concepts and broaden their minds.
And BTW, Gates, plug a second mouse to a Mac and you can control the cursor using two mice automatically without any further effort. That's what you mean by innovative, right? 'Cause I can't imagine kids having to track 50 cursors swarming at the same time on the screen, but since you are innovative, I guess you can innovate a way to make cursors look different.
Re:lets be honest now (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Text-free UI? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't look to commercial corporations to be philanthropists.
It's not the purpose of corporations to be philanthropists. In fact, a corporation that can actually afford to be philanthropist is unlikely to be engaged in free market capitalism.
The theory of free market capitalism has it that competition with the incentive of possible profit will enhance the efficiency of production so that everyone benefits from lower costs for more value. Most corporations are not interested in that; increasing efficiency is hard. It's often easier to affect the other side of the equation; decrease competition. Buy the competition, lobby for more protection, raise switching costs, tie products, use loss-leaders, etc. Gates is the posterboy for such corporate monopolism; anticompetetive behaviour that keeps the price of things out of the hands of exactly the people he claims to want to help.
So, give Gates a break.
I see no indication that Gates has changed. He's still not interested in competitive free markets; he's got his fingers deep in the patent pot, something that's actively preventing cheap medicines in many countries.
Sure, he's found a new mission in whitewashing now, but his actions suggest it's the same old Gates. Control and profit's the name of the game, wether you're pushing software or image.
Re:Text-free UI? (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows has been able to do that since at least Windows 95 as well. That's not what he was talking about here.
There's some irony in complaining about how Gates has made a career out of stealing ideas, and then bringing up Apple as a counter-example. If anyone has been stretching the word ``innovation'' beyond all recognisability, it's Jobs.
(Not a Gates fan either, though, and as a rule, I'll take predictability over ``innovation'' in user interfaces any day.)
Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on? (Score:3, Interesting)
when i was in university, our 1st year English course dedicated 2 weeks to the 3 there's.
on the other hand, my middle school ESL students know the difference between 'they're', 'their', and 'there'.
i spent 2 weeks in university on this stuff, while 14 year old Korean kids who can't speak English know their theirs.
Re:lets be honest now (Score:2, Interesting)
...with all due respect to his charitable efforts, for which, if for little else, I respect him...
Uh. I'd have more respect for his charitable efforts if he was giving away more money than he was taking in. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation consistently donates about half of its previous year's revenues. So his pile of money is growing only half as fast as it would if he didn't give any away. It isn't shrinking at all. A quick look at the tax law shows the reason: by giving away this little bit every year, B&MGF avoids having to pay a lot more in USA taxes.
Mr. Bill used to dress like a geek, but he was never a geek: however you define geekdom, avarice would never be its dominant quality. Mr. Bill now prefers to wear the vestments of a philanthropist, but again it has all got to do with his outer appearance. His manifest behavior continues to be that of an avaricious pig.
Re:Creative Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Here, I'll help...
Microsoft's products are developed, marketed, and sold using the capitalism economic system (I realize that Free Market is supposed to be part of a Capitalist Economy and Microsoft has used illegal business tactics to destroy Free Market in their main business sector, but bear with me). Their main product, Windows, is currently going for around $150. At one dollar a day an individual would need to work about half a year to purchase the operating system to run a computer let alone the hardware.
Giving up half a year of income to buy software is a rather surmountable task when you also need to buy food, clothes, residence, transportation, etc. Just to put it into perspective, the average car in the United States costs about one half of the average annual income and most people have to borrow money on a 3 to 7 year loan to pay off a new car. Imagine borrowing money on a 3 to 7 year loan simply to buy Windows. Its ridiculous.
So in order to provide the benefits of the latest technology in computer operating systems to someone who makes a dollar a day there needs to be a creative solution. One possibility would be to cut into those massive 80%+ margins built into the Capitalist price of Windows to make it more affordable, that doesn't even require much in the way of being creative. But to really be creative how about changing the licensing and distribution of the product to further reduce the costs to deliver and purchase the product. Well, guess what, its already been done, its called Open Source.
The initial development costs for an operating system are expensive, but once it is developed the distribution costs are minimal. Now you can create a licensing scheme that creates a fake supply side in the supply demand equation there by inflating the cost of the product, but Open Source does not do this. An Open Source license is a creative way to not only reducing the cost of delivery, but it also creates an abundant supply and spreads the initial cost of development.
Now the cost of acquiring the operating system which is Open Source is at most the cost of the media and transporting or even cheaper if there is internet access.
Creative eh? ;)
Of course you will get a bunch of flak from people suffering from psychotic paranoia delusions about Open Source being Socialist, Communist, or even Cancer, but the fact is there are many hard core for profit capitalist corporations in the red blooded United States of America who are not only relying on Open Source software but they are part of the development community. All I can tell you is pay no heed, they are simply blinded.
Re:Creative Capitalism (Score:2, Interesting)
Text-free UI to teach reading (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than give illiterate people more reason to not learn how to read, why not make a Text-free UI to teach them how to read first?
Dumbing everything down just seems like the wrong way to go about anything.
Re:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not sure that you can separate a person from their past that easily.
I'm unclear why we're trying to seperate the person from their past. Rich people getting rich first then doing charity is a strong tradition going back millenia. Gates is notable in that his charity will probably be particularly effective, especially giving money to treat Third world diseases and parasites. I see no reason that Gates should jump on the latest fad. If he thinks he has a viable alternative to open source, then I see no reason he shouldn't try it.
Further, I don't see the point of your remarks on business. Of course, the goal of business is to make money not to do the best thing for people in general. I don't see why that scope should change. Do you think it'd be a good idea for Microsoft to act based on what they rationalize as the "best thing"? My take is no organization or person has sufficient vision or lack of bias to decide what is "best". As a result, I don't think it is a worthy goal to strive for. Your idea of what is "best" is going to conflict with mine. Instead, I feel any society where people can be happy, strive for ambitious, personal goals, and be free from opression is a good enough society.