Bill Gates: Solving the World’s Problems Through Technology

Last week, we showed you a clip of Bill Gates speak­ing at the recent Techon­o­my con­fer­ence in Lake Tahoe. Our com­ments con­cen­trat­ed on a short­er seg­ment where Gates talks about the com­ing trans­for­ma­tion of edu­ca­tion – about how the inter­net will start dis­plac­ing the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty with­in five years. That clip fig­ures into a larg­er talk, now ful­ly avail­able online, called “Rein­vent­ing Cap­i­tal­ism: How to Jump­start What the Mar­ket­place Can’t” (48 min­utes). And it puts Gates’ views on edu­ca­tion (not to men­tion his over­all phil­an­thropic work) into a larg­er con­text. What’s gen­er­al­ly on dis­play here is his lim­it­less faith that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy can solve the world’s prob­lems. It’s an approach that makes per­fect sense for rid­ding the world of malar­ia. But it’s poten­tial­ly a dou­ble-edge sword for edu­ca­tion. You can watch the full talk above, or view it here. (His full com­ments on edu­ca­tion & tech­nol­o­gy come around the 21 minute mark, and again lat­er on.) You can also learn more about what Gates is read­ing, watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to on his web­site.

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