An Exclusive Interview With Bill Gates
7th November 2013
It was an argument he says he made to Thomas Friedman as The New York Times columnist was writing his 2005 book, The World is Flat, a work that came to define the almost end-of-history optimism that accompanied the entry of China and India into the global labour markets, a transition aided by the internet revolution. “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.”
And that tells you everything you need to know about Bill Gates — and Thomas Friedman.
Unfortunately, his viewpoint is still technocratic: “Hey, there’s this problem! We’re smart guys, we fix problems! Let’s go!” Such people spend all their time fixing the symptoms and not addressing the disease, which is the social structures and attitudes that allow such problems to arise and persist in the first place.