[tblc-diversity] Computers do little for Poverty

[kmccook@chuma.cas.usf.edu]

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. 



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Kathleen de la Pe=F1a McCook

Coordinator of Community Outreach, College of Arts & Sciences

Professor, School of Library & Information Science,

University of South Florida, CIS 1040,

Tampa, FL 33620    813-974-9182

http://www.cas.usf.edu/lis/faculty/mccook.html    

kmccook@chuma.cas.usf.edu



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Kathleen de la Pe=F1a McCook
Coordinator of Community Outreach, College of Arts & Sciences
Professor, School of Library & Information Science,
University of South Florida, CIS 1040,
Tampa, FL 33620    813-974-9182
http://www.cas.usf.edu/lis/faculty/mccook.html     kmccook@chuma.cas.usf.e=
du