An exclusive interview with Bill Gates - FT.com:

“Fine, go to those Bangalore Infosys centres, but just for the hell of it go three miles aside and go look at the guy living with no toilet, no running water,” Gates says now. “The world is not flat and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.”

It's flat, sure, but flat from the perspective of moving capital, not flat in the sense of socioeconomic equality.

Gates sure gets that. 

Honestly, picking malaria as your primary humanitarian fight is brilliant in its sensibility.  It's already been eradicated in some geographies, so it's a winnable fight.  It's a big enough issue that populations have evolved to where that it's better to throw away a quarter of your otherwise viable progeny to give two-thirds of those who do make it resistance to the disease.  And it's cheap & low tech -- simply giving nets "can reduce the chance of children catching malaria by 20 percent" (unicef).  And a how much is a cure if you do get malaria?  Ran me $6 including the doctor's home visit.

I'm not sure you don't want this guy running, if not Microsoft, then Windows.

Labels: , , ,