A new Gate Way?

[Judi Richardson]

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 Observer

Sunday November 5, 2000

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.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000



€ Judith Richardson
B.A., B.Ed., C.N.E.
M.A. Candidate
Paralegal Studies
Akerley Campus
Nova Scotia Community College
21 Woodlawn Road
Dartmouth, N.S.
B2W 2R7
(phone:  491-4864
(fax 491-4903)

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