Bill Gates: Internet Will Not Save the World 247
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.'"
Bill is doing the right things (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago, when I was a zoology major in university, I spent some time working on a study of elephant migration paths in Africa.
It was an eye opening experience. I was staggered by the sheer poverty, the lack of access to safe drinking water and food, the high rates of preventable illness, and the high rate of child deaths. I remember a woman living in Uganda who made "biscuits" for children made with washed dirt simply so they could get something into their stomachs that would reduce the hunger pains and not kill them. I don't give to USA charities since then. I give all my charity dollars to people who are doing outstanding work in areas of disease and poverty.
I have no idea what people struggling to find food would do with the internet. Would it enrich their lives? I don't see how. Would it save them from disease? Would it allow their children greater likelyhood to see their fifth birthday?
Bill Gates has the right idea. I just wish other very rich people had as much sense and willingness to spend their money to help people.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine having a library in your village that could show you how to build water condensers, new farming techniques, basic chemistry that could improve your quality of life, really ANY piece of information you could conceive of as well as the ability to communicate remotely with other vilalges trying to overcome similar problems at the touch of your hands.
But no, better to hand out fish then give access to fishing instructions.
Knowledge is power.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine having a library in your village that could show you how to build water condensers, new farming techniques, basic chemistry that could improve your quality of life, really ANY piece of information you could conceive of as well as the ability to communicate remotely with other vilalges trying to overcome similar problems at the touch of your hands.
But no, better to hand out fish then give access to fishing instructions.
Knowledge is power.
This is the stuff right here. It is not just one or the other, both are important. Having someone parachute in and give everybody shots is one noble and great thing. Having someone drive up right behind him with a library is yet another.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:4, Insightful)
This is asinine. Do you realize the literacy rate in these countries?
This is why a "library" is useless for these people. They have very little time to even go to school in the poorest parts of the world because they are spending their time trying to make a subsistence living. That is how our ancestors lived, and people were only able to go to school and concentrate and learn once they had food in their bellies.
Someone parachuting in, not with a library, but with the KNOWLEDGE the library contains, and the willingness and money to build the infrastructure for them is better.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:5, Insightful)
Chicken, meet egg. I work with in Northern Mozambique. Low literacy is a problem, not because kids (and adults) don't want to read but because there's no books. You learn a bit at school on a chalkboard but go home and there's nothing.
The internet is where my kids do most of their reading. After having been here five years, witnessing culture, rumor and tradition, I think the number one way to prevent disease is education. The cheapest, fastest way to teach this stuff? The internet.
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I thought it was comic books...
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Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:5, Interesting)
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Good. They'll learn faster if they're able to focus on things in which they're interested. The population as a whole will acquire a broader set of knowledge.
Some of them will gain an in-depth unparalleled understanding of the origins of football and the history of Africa's participation in the world cup but some people just aren't cut out for biology anyway.
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Building the infrastructure in a lot of these countries doesn't matter. If you don't value human life it is only a matter of time before some idiot decides that only his tribe should have access to water and breaks the wells. Or there is a war and the knowledgeable people all go home. Help can't equal do it for them because just like in star trek interfering with a culture before they are ready to use technology responsibly isn't a good idea. Save everyone from malaria so the shitheads can rape and kill the
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Imagine being starving and having no ability to do anything for yourself.
This is the current level of affairs in Africa, and the most popular answer to this problem is 'make babies like rabbits, because nothing solves problems better than kids with swollen abdomen and flies in their eyes'.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine having a library in your village that could show you how to build water condensers, new farming techniques, basic chemistry that could improve your quality of life, really ANY piece of information you could conceive of as well as the ability to communicate remotely with other vilalges trying to overcome similar problems at the touch of your hands.
But no, better to hand out fish then give access to fishing instructions.
Knowledge is power.
You know, this sounds like a great idea in practice.
In reality it is quite different. I agree with Calibax. Having seen the poverty first hand and having worked to help build a medical clinic in Kenya, as well as my Ex, who runs a charity in Tanzania.
We got them some of these books, and some of this knowledge. They have access to a lot of it believe it or not. The problem is not that they don't know how to do it, but the same infrastructure problems that bother us in the modern world. We might "know" that building a good rail network in a city area will improve infrastructure - but politics and other factors get in the way.
In the same way, gaining access to clean water sounds like it should make a difference, just give the people the knowledge of how to build that dam and water pipe, as well as a sand filter system, and it will all be fixed right?
Not in my experience. People in poor countries are just like us, but with fewer "toys". They procrastinate, they like to have fun. They would love to own an ipod or iphone. They are more concerned with getting the next meal and next "fun" thing than they are with building infrastructure. When is the last time you went out and built yourself a water line by hand? They just don't see it as a priority. I know this because when we worked on one trying to bring cleaner water to the clinic, all the locals wondered why we would bother when you could just get water from the stream like they always have. And yes, they know that the stream water would make them sick, but it is rather like dealing with a smoker - they have got along just fine this far with stream or swamp water, why should they change if things are working fine? There are other things to worry about.
So, in my experience, they have the material to teach them how to change, but are so focused on living day to day that they don't have the mental bandwidth to build infrastructure projects like you would expect. In my experience, Bill Gates approach is the right one - fix the basic needs first, then they will have the mental bandwidth to devote to projects.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong. F You.
It has nothing to do with stupidity. It has everything to do with culture and human conditioning.
If your grandfather fished a certain way, and he taught your father to fish that way, and your father taught you to fish that way, and the same is true for the other children in the village, then that's the way you fish. The odds are, you derive pleasure from fishing that way. It feels right, because that's the way your preteen brain was wired to live. If I now come in and say to the village "Hey. Stop fishing. Use this sophisticated replicator to produce all the fish matter you want from sunlight", the majority of the village will ignore me. Not because they're stupid, but because they're *people that fish*.
Over time, the replicators will be used more, and the fishing will occur less. Some of the older folks will never give up fishing. Some of the children will not learn how to fish. Eventually, the fishing will stop as one generation dies off and another raised in a new way supplants it.
The same thing happens in first world cultures, to blacksmiths, weavers, and eventually C# coders. Some have the capacity to adjust. Many don't.
Really, you need to provide the *aid* to the older generation, and the *education* to the younger and those that can adjust. The reality of most aid programs is that just the opposite occurs, which is why most aid programs are doomed to fail.
Re:Bill is doing the right things (Score:5, Informative)
But no, better to hand out fish then give access to fishing instructions.
Maybe so. There is a very interesting article [economist.com] 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.
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Micro-loans are a scam. (Score:2)
I went to that Kiva site after seeing ads all over Hulu and was, frankly, quite appalled at the usury rates that the local loan sharks are charging when lending the money you donate.
I like the idea of making it a loan rather than a hand-out, but they should be charging normal interest rates, or even no interest. They don't need to cover the risk cost because there isn't any - that's the whole point of donating money, you expect to lose it.
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A big part of it is the inflation rate. Ex. I looked at one in offering loans in Mongolia at ~19% interest. The thing is inflation has been around 15% there so the effective interest rate is only about 4%. With defaults the return on investment was quoted at 1.8% which is probably about right.
I get the donate part and I don't expect to see my money again but I'd like to see it sustain itself. Otherwise you are dumping money into something that has no chance of helping: buying a car for a guy to be taxi driv
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What are the few people in the village able to read books in this magical library going to build the magical water condensers out of? The nearest Home Depot is five thousand miles away and they don't take IOUs. New farming techniques are a faster way to die of starvation in most situations as it takes a few years of experimental crop failures to develop something new and better than the locals hadn't discovered over the past few hundred years of famines.
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Growing a crop that some teapot dictator comes and feeds to his cousins isn't a pretty effective way of getting ahead either. People have to have stability to have a reasonable expectation of profit to invest in the future. Otherwise they'll sit on the ground and wait for a meal to be delivered to them or eat the grain rather than feed it to the chickens or save it to plant for next year. This is a vast generalization though. A bunch of countries in Africa are making significant gains. Opportunies give you
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Fishing instructions are worthless to anyone who can't read or doesn't have a fishing boat.
Pharmaceutical information is worthless to anyone who is 1,000 kilometers away from the nearest pharmacy.
New farming techniques are worthless to anyone that is unable to farm because all the fertile land has been seized by the local warlord.
Knowledge is nice, but it isn't quite as powerful as you might think.
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They need to talk to a tribal elder ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Build them out of what? Using what tools?
The other anonymous coward most likely refers to survival tricks that start out simplistic using sticks, stones and cloth.
And where do these survival tricks using primitive materials come from? They often come from the indigenous people of the region. For example the technique of filtering water through sand, plant materials, charcoal, etc is thousands of years old. These people don't necessarily need the internet to explain such things, a tribal elder of the region explaining how his grandfather used to purify water, what different plants were used for, etc may do a far better job. Well, at least for the people living in rural areas. For those in urban areas the techniques using primitive materials may not scale up.
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Helping the poorest of the poor is indeed good and we have managed to lift many out of extreme poverty (less than $1.25/day) but we've not made the same progress on lifting people further out of the very poor (less than $2/day). Like for example India where 33% live in extreme poverty and 69% are very poor or Pakistan where 21% live in extreme poverty but 60% is very poor. Those billions of people also need a lift so we're more to help drag the poorest billion out of poverty.
Drinking Water Isn't So Easy As You Think (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was a kid I did Unicef collection every Haloween. We got an orange cardboard coin box at school, and collected donations to it along with our trick-or-treat. Unicef used these funds to build water wells for people in Africa who had only access to contaminated surface water.
A decade or two later, we found that many of these wells accessed aquifers that were contaminated by arsenic. And that thus we kids had funded the wholesale poisoning of people in Africa, and that a lot of them had arsenic-induced cancers that were killing them.
OK, we would not make that mistake again, and today we have access to better water testing. But it caused me to lose my faith that we really do know how to help poor people in the third world, no matter how well-intentioned we are.
And we had better not go around curing disease withoput also promoting birth control. Despite what the churches say, and the local dislikes and prejudices. Or we'll just be condemning more people to starve.
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And we had better not go around curing disease withoput also promoting birth control. Despite what the churches say, and the local dislikes and prejudices. Or we'll just be condemning more people to starve
Well, you're unlikely to persuade a Catholic charity to do that, but others can (and do) take up the slack. Heck, even in predominately Catholic countries people stop having so many children once child mortality drops (with about a 1-generation lag), and their priests are smart enough not to enquire too closely. Cure diseases now, people are smart enough to manage the birth rate later.
Tube wells and arsenic contamination (Score:4, Informative)
A decade or two later, we found that many of these wells accessed aquifers that were contaminated by arsenic. And that thus we kids had funded the wholesale poisoning of people in Africa, and that a lot of them had arsenic-induced cancers that were killing them.
Are you sure you're not mixing up two different stories here? Although trace amounts of Arsenic are common in aquifers that contact certain kinds of alluvial sediments, only a few areas have experienced really high concentrations. In particular, this has happened with shallow tube wells in India and Bangladesh [who.int]. These types of wells were extremely cheap, and were drilled in the millions starting around the 1970's with UNICEF assistance; I am unaware of any similar large-scale occurrence of contamination in Africa.
On looking at the morbidity and mortality modeling from the WHO link, I wouldn't automatically label it an complete tragedy right away, either. The amount of Cancer and other diseases from arsenic contamination (chronic ingestion, the concentration is not the kind required for acute poisoning) is definitely non-trivial. However, following the implementation of the tube wells, infant mortality dropped by something like half (keeping in mind this that the high starting point of mortality means half of a fairly big number), with substantial reductions in prevalence of waterborne diseases. It is entirely possible that the number of lives (and maybe person-years of life) saved by the wells could outnumber those that were lost.
Actually, I strongly suspect that the person-years of life saved could be greatly more than the number lost, but I can't directly substantiate the possibility with numbers, except to say there is evidence that recent anti-arsenic campaigns have resulted in increases in infant mortality [mit.edu], due to avoidance or loss of well water leading to greater use of microbially contaminated water supplies.
Obviously, it would be great to have both clean water with no arsenic at all. Possible with deeper but more expensive wells that have been gradually replacing the older wells (it sounds like other strategies like filtration and rain-water storage have sustainability problems when implemented out in the field), but I doubt UNICEF or similar charitable organizations can get the money they need these days to replace them all at a sweep.
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Wanted to post a clarification:
http://web.mit.edu/j-pal/www/book/Arsenic_InfantMortality_feb10.pdf [mit.edu]
On the other end of the spectrum, the calculations by Lokuge et al. (2004) of the dis-
ease burden from arsenic exposure that take into account only "strong causal evidence" from
existing studies estimate that arsenic-related disease leads to the loss of 174,174 disability-
adjusted life years (DALYs) per year among the population exposed to arsenic concentrations
of more than 50 ppb, which amounts to 0.3% of the disease burden, compared with diarrheal
disease which accounts for between 7.2% and 12.1% of the total disease burden.
Since infant mortality results in a disproportionate DALY impact compared with adult morbidity and mortality, I suspect the percentage of DALY disease burden impact gets skewed, but overall I think my previous point stands.
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My google search on the issue came up with Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Bangladesh. Two of which seem to be African, the latter South Asian I guess.
I'm sure you can come up with better data.
Besides infant mortality, there's probably unreported miscarriage.
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Well, anyone who has a friend or a relative with some resources could theoretically use the internet to tell faraway relatives that the kids are eating dirt and ask for any little bit of assistance that they could get.
The way they're actually doing this is by using simple GSM phones with voice and text. Mobile phone penetration is close to 50% in Africa as a whole and growing rapidly, so most people either own a phone or are able to borrow one if they need to make an important call or send an important text
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> I have no idea what people struggling to find food would do
> with the internet. Would it enrich their lives? I don't see how.
> Would it save them from disease? Would it allow their
> children greater likelyhood to see their fifth birthday?
Starvation is not the ONLY problem in the world. There are plenty of people who do have food, and have other problems instead, for whom the Internet would be a great help. Technology isn't the answer to everything, but that doesn't mean it's useless. It's not
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It links them up as part of the greater worldwide community, which in turn gives access to information, provides opportunities to earn cash, and makes it easier to pool resources with nearby communities to build infrastructure. Or, for that matter, ask for help - the world ac
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Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up first.
Some rich people choose to use some of their money for charity, rather than to make more money. Deal with it.
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"Stop giving to the poor and give to me instead!"
Finding a vaccination for malaria is unlikely to be a bad thing for the economy, but even if it was it would definitely hel
They are both wrong (Score:2)
Eradicating disease sounds like a noble pursuit and indeed Nobel prizes have been awarded for efforts there. However the problem with success is that disease is one of natures ways of keeping populations in check. The other natural method of keeping populations in check is predators and we humans have pretty much eliminated most of our natural predators. Were one of the very rare species that dies from old age, a luxury not available to most of the animal kingdom.
Overpopulation is a serious problem in parts
Re:They are both wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, that's the naive cynical view. The reality is that as societies become more wealthy (particularly, as they move out of starvation/subsistence) they have less children (not more), and an important part of getting out of the poverty trap is reducing disease (which destroys a tremendous amount of labor). It's not the only step, obviously, but it is a step in the right direction (even if we are trying to behave as idealized, heartless social planning robots, and ignore all the current suffering this could mitigate).
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I wish I could find the link to the great presentation a professor did on TED. It showed how better healthcare, increase in lifestyle and education directly resulted in reduced births per family.
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Education, access to health services, and increasing affluence will do wonders for reducing fertility rates. Bangledesh is a striking example of this. Also, consumption is a bigger problem than population overall. The average westerner has something like 13x the carbon footprint of a person living in subsaharan africa, IIRC.
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Second, overpopulation is the issue. We all want a better lifestyle and there is no way to avoid that. As more people live, and more people want stuff, the planet is going to have big issues. The mantra used to be that the planet cannot handle every person in China owning a refrigerator. China is dealing with that reality now. It is not pretty. The only way to deal with overpopulation is change our cons
Hmmmm.... Kickstarter? (Score:2)
My charity is more important than your charity... (Score:2)
I'm not saying Gates is necessarily wrong, but it is awfully convenient that the most important issue for the world just happens to be the one his charity is involved in.
I question whether you can even know what will "save the world". Look at risks to human civilization. What is the impact of malaria on the population versus say, an asteroid crashing into our planet? The latter is more catastrophic to the survival of our species than the former, but the probability of occurrence is much lower.
What if the In
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He didn't just find himself running a disease charity, so therefore he's claiming that's what's important. He chose to set up a charity for what he felt was the most important problem. You can say he's wrong if you want, sure - but saying it's "convenient" is really silly; you're getting the causality chain completely backwards.
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I'm not saying Gates is necessarily wrong, but it is awfully convenient that the most important issue for the world just happens to be the one his charity is involved in.
What a moronic statement, it isn't convenient at all. He picked what he thought was the most important issue facing the world and created his charity around addressing that, how the fuck is that "convenient".
More product (Score:2)
Of course ... 5 billion more facebook accounts, more product for Facebook to sell to advertisers.
Yeah it will (Score:2)
The free flow of information—that is, the Great Discussion—is already helping people identify and eliminate the stupidity in their own respective cultures/socities.
Cryptographic technologies are allowing countercultures and new ideas to blossom in protected environments, and decentralize the control of resources, thereby allowing society to evolve more effectively by variation and selection.
The Internet will save the world. The Internet is already saving the world.
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The internet is a tool, nothing more.
Like any tool it could be used for "good" or bad. Cryptographic techology allows both counter-cultures and terrorist networks to blossom (good or bad depending on your politics), and allows people to protect their IP from piracy (good or bad depending on your politics). Decentralized control of resources can be good (more experiments), or bad (segregation, discrimination). Unfortunatly just as it decentralizes, the internet also appears to be concentrating other resou
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The internet is a tool, nothing more.
Language is a tool, nothing more. Before language the minds of your peers were unknown to you. You largely feared each other in situations where it was better safe than sorry. Society was very limited in its ability to better mankind.
After language an explosion of civilization occurred. The written word allowed ideas to live in tact beyond a mind's life and be refined over time. Ideas larger than a single head could be processed and the centers where such knowledge was gathered were marvels of scientif
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Language of course is as old as the hills and probably the biggest thing that separates us from other animals. However, the internet as we know it will be just another flash in the pan along the way.
Although the speed that current language is propagated is welcomed by some, the propagation is also serving to kill off local languages at lighting speed. English and (Mandarin) Chinese seem to be the only languages making headway in this new era and many languages are in a precipitous decline. Some think tha
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Even if this was true, I very much doubt anyone would choose famine and disease over keeping their traditions pure - I'm assuming you weren't implying we should make the choice for them to provide ourselves with more cultural diversity. But of course it's not true. Archeology would not be possible if it was. None of the world religions could exist if it was. Iliad and Odyssey would be incomprehe
Education will save the world (Score:3)
Giving people treatment to diseases is great, but it's a short term solution. What happens in 10 years, if you're not around to give them treatment?
People in underdeveloped countries need to be able to self-sustain themselves. Even if they can't develop a treatment themselves, they should be able to economically support importing it. Education is what's needed for all of this, and the internet is the best tool for education.
So, we need both short term (giving them the treatment they need) and long term (giving them the tools they need to advance).
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The efforts in these 3rd world countries are more than providing supplies. They actually show people how to dig wells and find drinkable water. There are communities that have been built on this concept and that have become self sufficient.
Internet requires computers and computer require electricity. To get to the point where computers can help these people, they need to develop infrastructure and that requires people going there and teach them how to build communities. That is where the funding needs to go
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The efforts in these 3rd world countries are more than providing supplies. They actually show people how to dig wells and find drinkable water. There are communities that have been built on this concept and that have become self sufficient.
Internet requires computers and computer require electricity. To get to the point where computers can help these people, they need to develop infrastructure and that requires people going there and teach them how to build communities. That is where the funding needs to go at this point in time.
No. Progress in "3rd world countries" comes about when people are empowered to look at their own problems and find their own solutions to them rather than have "experts" from the "developed world" come and tell them what to do.
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People in "under-developed" countries are not the only ones in trouble in this world. Those in Europe and the US shouldn't think that they're future is necessarily better than those in the "third world".
What will save the world is a profound recognition of the oneness of humankind, that we all have rights and responsibilities, that we all should be respected and that the only way to solve our problems is learning how to collaborate. Also, the vast majority of humanity must learn to solve its own problems ra
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You may have a point. Long after western society collapses, the poor in Africa will likely continue to suffer just as they do today.
The reality is, there is no oneness of humankind. A rock falls on my head tomorrow and I die, yo
well, duh (Score:2)
The Internet is a tool, subject to the human will and policies.
"eradicating disease" is instead long, constant process that requires multiple tools, innovation and people.
It also already has an objective (saving people's lifes).
So, we are comparing a mere object with no specific objective to a long, evolving process with a specific goals...
Color me unimpressed.
But even "eradicating disease" per se doesn't save the world, first because "the world" is not "the people", and because having the cure doesn't me
Don't give a... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mark Zuckerberg's and the like don't give a shit personally about the other people who don't have internet connection and the reasons they are not online. They just want them online for revenue. Get them online, make advertising dollars from them, let them figure out how to survive life.
Did Bill Gates care about the wider world when he was Zuckerberg's age? Wasn't he busy building a monolithic and morally questionable business?
I imagine it's rather easier to look good in the eyes of the world when you're sitting on enough money to do something about it, and the days when you collected that money are over.
Didn't he one say (Score:3)
Or at least something to that effect?
I think it was in his book.
Duh? (Score:2)
Nay Sayer Of the Week (Score:2)
Ok, give me a trophy. Call me a really negative idiot or whatever. But seriously folks over population is an urgent and overwhelming issue. If you want a healthier world, a more employable population, less diseases, wars and poverty then the last thing you want to do is save lives. Saving lives is only valuable when you have firm control over birth rates. For those with very short memories the population bomb is real, it is here now, and it is eating us alive. If you think thing suck now wait until ano
...saving the world from what? (Score:2)
False Dichotomy... (Score:2)
Why can't we have both?
The High Cost of Clean Energy is the Central Issue (Score:2)
Energy use fundamentally underlies all economic activity, and this is primarily a technological issue. The general ignorance regarding this relationship and what it implies about how we produce energy can theoretically be addressed by the Internet as it is an issue of consciousness.
Gail Tverberg's excellent article on the matter should be carefully considered: http://oilprice.com/Finance/the-Economy/Why-Rising-Energy-Costs-are-Responsible-for-Widespread-Economic-Recession.html [oilprice.com]
The globe consumes on the order
Gates is Wrong. (Score:2)
The internet can save the world, and is doing so right now.
Consider the widespread awakening of people, organizations and communities to the details and orchestrations of world government.
The psycho paths who have deliberately destroyed countless civilizations in the past, no longer can destroy in complete secrecy.
If we lose this civilization, it will be because most people want it too happen.
The destruction of obsolescence of such concepts of freedom, liberty and personal virtue is every where in the news:
Population (Score:3)
End result (Score:2)
Bill "McSwindler" Gates (Score:2)
Translation: What I am doing is right, and whateveryone else is doing is wrong.
I'd say he's slightly biased. I guess this is payback for people not liking him, or his products, or his predatory practices
Re:True (Score:5, Funny)
They guy is right.
They grammar is wrong
Re:True (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's more complicated than that. But his perspective seems to be one applying a humanistic vision in conjunction with empiricism. The fact that it's an unusual approach to charity is what's really baffling.
Re:True (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's more complicated than that. But his perspective seems to be one applying a humanistic vision in conjunction with empiricism. The fact that it's an unusual approach to charity is what's really baffling.
Baffling indeed.
Yes, having the people educated is one thing that needs to happen. But it is one of many components.
In order to give them Internet access they must also have power and communications systems. They must be literate or all the words are meaningless.
If the people are dying of malnutrition then yes, additional education about farming techniques and food safety can help. If people are dying from sanitation problems then yes, additional education can help. But it is just a single thing on the long list of things that need to happen to transform a society.
Sure they can give the rural slash-and-burn farmers an Internet-enabled computer with satellite modems and solar power chargers. It is nice to teach a farming community that for generations has practice slash-and-burn techniques that they should read about alternatives, but that by itself will not solve anything. Give them computers and Internet access and all you will have is a community who still practices the same techniques, with the change that they now can watch cat videos and play Angry Birds. The technology by itself won't transform them.
It takes a lot of pieces working together. It is true that giving computers to children can help benefit the community as shown through "Hole in the Wall" and other experiments [google.com] but that little bit of education is only one facet, there are hundreds of other facets that need to be addressed. Providing a little bit of education is useful, but does not help much against problems of rampant disease, abuse, family planning, nor does it provide the tools and technology needed to implement what is taught. Teaching the community "this is what refrigeration can do for you" doesn't help if they cannot get electricity. Teaching the community "these are health issues that chlorinated water can treat" doesn't help when the village is struggling just to get enough muddy water so everyone can subsist.
There is much work to do. If one group wants to help by adding educational tools, that is certainly one useful thing. But Gates is right that there is a very broad spectrum of changes needed to bring regions out of poverty, and Internet access alone is not enough.
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There is much work to do. If one group wants to help by adding educational tools, that is certainly one useful thing. But Gates is right that there is a very broad spectrum of changes needed to bring regions out of poverty, and Internet access alone is not enough.
And, of course, there's the aspect of all this that everyone seems to overlook -- connectivity is not education. It may make it easier to get educated if it's used in conjunction with an education program, but in and of itself the internet is a piss-poor educational tool. The sheer volume of misinformation, minutiae, gossip, and punditry dwarfs the sorts of knowledge that are actually useful, much less the subset of that knowledge that would be useful to someone in the developing world.
Those of us who us
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I think you've hit the nail on the head here. Until there is a high quality source of information for these people, the internet will not provide them what they need or want. Perhaps the solution is to let them build it, though. Provide the infrastructure, wiki style, and let them teach each other. Other experts from developed nations could provide additional input.
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Reminds me of the time this guy was in the street signing people up regular donations to a scheme which helped drug and alcohol addicts. He was really enthused, "yeah this scheme is great, it really helps people, it is really successful."
I ask, oh ok, so let's see, a meaningful change would stick for at least two years, so do you guys follow up with people and see if they are still doing well after two years?
"Oh people really move around a lot and you know we can't track them. But this scheme is really good
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"You don't have to be Internet connected to be a Microsoft customer."
GFL with that, Windows 8 requires an email address before it completes the install.
Re:True (Score:4, Interesting)
Waaaaa?
Sounds like *you've* never been involved in senior business decisions for a multimillion dollar company.
Re:True (Score:5, Interesting)
As for Gates, I'm almost exactly the same age as he is, I distinctly recall him saying on multiple occasions over the last 30yrs that he would give the bulk of his money to charity when he hit 55. Gates charity work and his efforts to get other billionaires to join him is has almost single-handedly rescued the traditional concept of US philanthropy from the "greed is good" generation.
Thing is you don't have that kind of money, which is odd given your obsession with it?
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No, but he's trying to put the good PR spin on things.
How about this one to start.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story#axzz2jXU69lfS [latimes.com]
Basically, he does humanitarian work to the locals, but is a large stake holder in the factories that are making the locals sick. Because he's "helping" them, he's the good guy. Because he's only a large stake holder in the factory, he's not the bad guy. He brings in more money from the factory than he puts out to help the locals.
Profit/Loss. I
Re: True (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:True (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill Gates is right. Zuckerberg's plan is a joke and the Internet isn't all that important for solving the world's problems. Unfortunately, Gates isn't helping much either, due to his fake philanthropy that often does more harm than good.
The Gates Foundation has an endowment of $30 Billion making it the largest philanthropic organization in the world. But one third of that money is invested in companies whose practices run counter to the foundation’s supposed charitable goals and social mission.
In Africa, the Foundation has invested more than $400 million dollars in oil companies responsible for pollution that many blame for respiratory problems and other afflictions among the local population.
The Gates Foundation also has investments in sixty-nine of the worst polluting companies in the US and Canada.. It holds investments in pharmaceutical companies whose drugs cost far beyond what most patients around the world can afford and the Foundation often lobbies on behalf of those companies for "Intellectual Property" protections that make obtaining low cost medicines more difficult.
Other companies in the Foundation’s portfolio have been accused of forcing thousands of people to lose their homes, supporting child labor and defrauding and neglecting patients in need of medical care.
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Reality is Bill Gates is wrong yet again. Getting everyone connected to the internet, in point of fact, will save the world. Right now run by psychopathic capitalism we are on a path to self destruction by greed and mass consumerism, we are wasting our resources and converting that waste into pollution at an insane rate by allowing the psychopathically insane to run the system.
The internet is giving the majority a voice and is exposing the insane minority who currently run the system for who they really
The example of swaziland (Score:5, Interesting)
Your ignoring the scale of suffering caused by disease in places like Africa and just how staggering an impact it is happening.
Take a place like Swaziland. 1/4 of the population has HIV, is too poor for triple cocktail treatment and are thus dying. 110,000 children are orphaned as a result. On top of that, 58% of the population requires treatment for pneumonia each year, and nearly 60% requiring rehydration for diarea (And we're not talking having a sore gut from a cold, but conditions that are often fatal).
Will education help them? Well swaziland has around 90% literacy rate, and an exceptionally good school enrollment rate which is comparable with even western countries. Something is failing here that *isnt* education.
The last major war Swaziland was involved in was nearly a century ago, and its monarchy is widely held to be benevolant and not particularly corrupt or malicious. Its economy however is , like many post-colonial countries, a bit of a basket case and income disparity is utterly terrible, with a fabulously rich ruling class and the majority of its population surviving on about $1.50 a day. Despite being well educated, simple education alone appears not to be fixing this.
The simple fact is a massive chunk of the productive workforce is incapacitated and dying placing enormous economic pressures on those who do work, and this causes terrible poverty, compounded of course by the terrible inequality that was foisted on the country from its legacy as a british colony.
Bracketing aside the troubling questions of wealth distribution, it is clear that swaziland is doomed without a very serious improvement in health care. HIV does not have to be a death sentence anymore when treated by modern anti-virals. We can't cure it yet, but we can make it something that doesn't kill. A westerner in a UHC country (to ensure poverty doesnt remove access to medicine) with HIV can live as long as someone without HIV as long as they continue to take the required medicines and lives a generally healthy lifestyle. Malaria is a disease that stalks the poor (when was the last time you heard of a malaria outbreak in europe, australia or the united states?) and can be trivially contained if the money is spent as it should. The remaining conditions can be contained and cured with simple antibiotics and ensuring clean water and hygenic waste disposal.
There is no reason Swasiland should be any poorer than a european country. But like many african countries, its problems revolve around universal access to healthcare, wealth disparity and equitable access to clean water and waste disposal. Education, and by this I mean the internet too, does not factor here. Whats the point of reading about the fabulous lives of the westerners whilst dying of AIDS, malaria and diahrea.
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Will education help people? Hmm, how's that cave going, heard about fire yet, perhaps you should try skinning and tanning animal hides, might even try growing crops, you know reading and writing and great ways to exchange and expand upon knowledge.
The mind boggles that you and your ilk do no comprehend the value of education. Education frees people, the more aware they are of the shared plight, the more aware they become of shared solutions, the sooner they just like we or at least our forebears, can sol
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Not only that, with Zuckerberg it is business disguised as altruism. The reason he really wants people online is because he wants their eyeballs on a Facebook feed.
Think of Gates however you want, but I personally think he deserves a huge amount of credit for doing real charity work.
Teach them how to fish (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not disputing your comments. However, what gives me second thoughts about the efforts of the Gates foundation is that they don't try to promote self-sufficiency in the target areas they're supposedly trying to help. For example, instead of simply trying to donate medicine why don't they try to set up labs that will manufacture the medicine within the country that needs it. It seems that even in his charity work Bill Gates has adopted the mindset of a proprietary software vendor, where even if a product is given away free, you're not given too much of a control over how it is to be used.
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The foundation is about making money, Money for the foundation and the business partners.
Please, just stop calling it a charity.
NOW he tells us!!! (Score:2)
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He didn't have a choice. If he didn't then Microsoft would've become irrelevant in no time flat.
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"They guy is right."
That guy has been wrong with every prediction about the internet in the last 20 years.
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To be fair, at the time he was right about encryption. Now there are other forms that do not depend on factorization, though - namely elliptic curve cryptography.
Disclaimer: This is not my area of expertise. I would not be too surprised to find out that elliptic curve cryptography existed in 1995. I am, nonetheless, fairly confident that there were no readily available implementations for non cryptographers.
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The point is, he said that the problem was to factor large prime numbers. Prime numbers. The factorization of every prime number is 1 and the number...
In conclusion, Gates is a sloppy proofreader at best, and a complete idiot at worst.
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all your grammar is belong to us
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I want a link to that statement. I knew the second that heavy protocol came out that it would not survive.
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If we're picking champions Symbian has probably done more for humanity than any other operating system in terms of saving lives and helping people make important connections.
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People might care more about contraception when their children aren't dying of hunger before age 5.
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Or when the fathers have to support all their bastards.
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It doesn't matter that the contractors harmed aren't poor third-world people. You don't get to excuse mistreating your workers just because your profit from the mistreatment goes to help people who are worse off than the workers you mistreated.
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Sure, if 6 billion people jumped off a cliff, I'd jump too.
Just me jumping is pointless as I'd be replaced in 2 seconds.
Sure we can produce enough food _now_ for everyone. But what about then the population hits 15 billion?
And more importantly, what happens when we run out of oil and other non-renewable resources?
Last I checked, without non-renewables, we could only support about 1 billion people. Maybe with advances in tech we might be able to support 2 or even 3 billion in the future.
I guess you're real