SCN: Bill Gates, TechnoSkeptic (fwd)

[Aki Namioka]

Interesting - I didn't see this before.

Thanks,
Aki Helen Namioka
aki at cpsr.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 23:27:45 -0800
From: Jeff Johnson <jjohnson at uiwizards.com>
To: cpsr-activists at cpsr.org
Subject: Bill Gates, TechnoSkeptic

Here's a very interesting story that might get lost in all the hoopla over
the election.

According to columnist Robert Scheer, who was actually summarizing a story
by Sam Howe Verhovek in the NYTimes
(http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/03/technology/03GATE.html), Microsoft
Chairmain Bill Gates spoke as closing keynote speaker at a recent
conference titled "Creating Digital Dividends".  Apparently, Gates shook up
the conference and annoyed some of its organizers with an unexpected speech
that was pessimistic about the benefits of information technology.

You can follow the link above to Verhovek's NYT article, but hare are a few
excerpts of Scheer's account, which was printed in the SF Examiner
(11/13/00) and is not on the Web yet as far as I could determine:

"Gates shocked [the] conference ... with the news that the billions of
people who subsist on a dollar a day are not in a position to benefit from
the Information Age.  He charged that the hoopla over the digital
revolution, which he pioneered, is now a dangerous distraction from the
urgent need to deal seriously with the festering problem of world poverty.

Gates ... also made the case that private donations alone will not solve
the problem, and that massive government intervention is needed.  'Do
people have a clear idea of what it is to live on $1 a day?' said Gates.

The premise of the conference was that "market drivers" will "bring the
benefits of connectivity and participation in the e-economy to all of the
world's 6 billion people."

... Gates doused that hope by denying that the poor would become part of
the wired world any time soon.  In a follow-up interview, Gates amplified
his view of what occurs when computers are suddenly donated to the poor:
'The 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.'

Gates ... criticized himself for having been 'naive--very naive.'  He has
shifted the focus of the $21 billion ... Gates Foundation from donating
Information Age technology, to meeting the health needs of the poorest,
beginning with the widespread distribution of vaccines.

...Gates has lost much of the faith he once had that global capitalism
would prove capable of solviing the most immediate catastrophes facing the
world's poorest people, especially the 40K deaths a day from preventable
diseases. ..."

===End excerpt===

The NYT article contains even more juicy quotes from other places Gates has
spoken recently, so take a look at it too.   Apparently, Gates is adopting
this TechnoSkeptic role now with increasing frequency.

My comment:  Either Hell has frozen over or pigs can now fly, I'm not sure
which.

Jeff Johnson

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