Gates Package — page 108

From: "Jin, Daozhong (NIH/OD) [C]" <Q @nih. gov> To: "Tabak, Lawrence (NIH/OD) [E]" <Q nib. gov> Subject: Article about Bill Gates Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:58:12 -0500 Importance: Normal Hello Dr. Tabak, Here's an article about Bill Gates from the Financial Times that Robert Eiss in FIC passed along. Daozhong From: Eiss, Robert (NIH/FIC) [E] Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 11:45 AM To: Jin, Daozhong (NIH/OD) [C] Subject: RE: October 7 visit of Bill Gates If of interest to Dr Tabak, the following was published in the Financial Times the Friday before last. It's well done http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dacd1f84-4 1 bf-11e3-b064-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2je9a7qXd November 1, 2013 11:05 am ° ° ° ° ° An exclusive interview with Bill Gates By Richard Waters 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. << OLE Object: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) >> ©Amanda Friedman Gates photographed at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle in September 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." Then, slipping back into the sarcasm that often breaks through when he is at his most engaged, he adds: "Take this malaria vaccine, [this] weird thing that I'm thinking of. Hmm, which is more important, connectivity or malaria vaccine? If you think connectivity is the key thing, that's great. I don't." At 58, Bill Gates has lost none of the impatience or intellectual passion he was known for in his youth. Sitting in his office on the shore of Seattle's Lake Washington, the man who dropped out of Harvard University nearly four decades ago and went on to build the world's first software fortune is more relaxed than he was. He has a better haircut and the more pronounced air of self-deprecation that comes with being married and having children who have reached adolescence. But, with the relentless intellectual energy he has always brought to bear on whatever issue is before him, he still can't resist the jibes at ideas he thinks are wrong-headed. After the interview, his minders call to try and persuade me to not report his comments on Zuckerberg: as a senior statesman of the tech and philanthropic worlds, it doesn't help these days to pick fights.