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Remarks by Bill Gates
Rainbow/PUSH Digital Connections Conference
San Jose, California
April 25, 2002
(Applause.)
BILL GATES: Thank you. Well, I’m excited to be here
today. The Reverend Jackson and I have been speaking for over a year about
getting together and sharing the common message we have about the opportunities
and how we can realize those by working together.
I’m a great optimist and I think a lot of the success I have
has come from that. And as I stand here today I see the technology business
creating more opportunities than ever. It really is a miracle business because
of the very rapid advances that are involved. When people thought about
computers 20 years ago they thought about them as a tool of the large
organization and really antithetical to human beings, to human values. They
talked about taking your punch card that was sent out as a bill and putting
staples in it to stop the system.
Well, that situation has changed completely. It’s changed
180 degrees. With the advent of low-cost computing through the miracle of the
microprocessor, the great work on that, most of it, as Mike Armstrong said, was
done right here in the area that we’re all in today, through those advances,
the personal computer has become a tool for the individual and we’ve seen in
many countries when governments are trying to repress communication, trying to
have a regime that’s not based on democratic values that it’s the presence of
the new technology, the PC, the electronic mail that allows the communication within
that country and going outside that country to bring things around in favor of
the individual.
So that change has taken place in a very brief period and
it’s taken place because we have these exponential improvements in what
computer technology can do.
We have not reached any limits in terms of those advances. Moore’s
Law was coined to talk about the doubling in power every two years. Well, that
exponential improvement, it appears that it will hold for something like the
next 10 to 20 years. That’s not just the chips that get better; it’s the
storage, it’s the communication; everything about these devices will make them
better tools for individuals.
What kind of things can we expect to do? Well, today we’ve
just touched the surface. People talk about, well, take music. We’ve got it
on CDs and that’s a little bit better than records were but you can’t organize
it. You can’t take it around with you in a simple way. Well, ten years from
now at the end of this decade, which I call the digital decade, everybody will
take it for granted that you use your music that way.
I had my daughter, we were talking in downtown Seattle the
other day, and there was a record store and I said to her, you know, it’s
great, it’s a record store. And she said, "Well, what’s a record?"
(Laughter.) Well, she’s young. (Applause.) She’s never seen a record. Well,
the 6-year olds at the end of this decade won’t know what a CD is. They’ll
expect that we always had our music where we wanted it, organized the way we
wanted it.
Even more profound, of course, is how you take that
extension, those digital approaches and reach out to all the businesses so that
if there’s something you want to buy, a product that you’re interested in, you
can find that out literally at the speed of light. So these advances will be
incredible. These advances will surprise us.
Some people say otherwise, looking at the kind of hype of a
few years ago, at the peak of the Internet bubble and say, "Hey, wasn’t
that all just overblown? Haven’t we seen now that there was a lot there that
was too optimistic?"
Well, in fact, there was a kind of mania around the Internet
that caused very high levels of investment, some inefficiency, but the dreams
in that time, those will be fulfilled and they’ll be fulfilled by the
individuals who take the long-term approach, who build the technologies, build
the companies that will deliver this during this decade. Business will all be
done this way.
The improvements I’m talking about are so exciting at both
the individual and business level that there’s really only one gotcha in the
whole picture, one thing that I think is of deep concern to everyone here, and
that is will the merits, will the benefits of these improvements be shared on a
very broad basis or will it rather be the source of some people benefit
disproportionately and take the divides that already exist and make those
greater.
If we look at the last few years we can see data on both
sides. We can say, hey, maybe we’re going to use this actually to bridge the
divide, but then we can see other statistics that say no, perhaps if we’re not
getting more people involved, more people to care about this, the divide could
grow greater.
One of the most interesting projects I was involved with was
one that involved Microsoft and my foundation in saying what is one very
dramatic thing that we could do. And we thought back and said, when was the
last time there was a crisis like this, and we said well, when books became
commonplace, where society decided everyone should know how to read and have
access to all the knowledge and benefits that come from books, the library
system was made pervasive. Libraries around the country were put in place and
virtually everyone could go there and have a chance to have the greatest books.
So the project we started was saying, let’s go to those
libraries, let’s see if they’re interested in not only having the books, which
are very key, but also having the latest PC and Internet technology. And we
said could we do that in all 20,000 libraries in this country.
The first state we picked to do that in was Alabama. I went
down there. I saw a few rural libraries. I was pretty surprised; they have a
tough time getting communications connections and it took a lot of hard work.
But with the partnerships that were driven through this
project, today we can say every library in the country has that personal
computer and that Internet connection. (Applause.)
Not only that, it actually works. (Laughter.) The kids
came, the adults came; the things they do with those computers are mostly the
things we’d want them to do with the computer. (Laughter.) And when they come
in they actually say hey, the books are here and they get more involved in
checking out the books as well. And so there’s a lot of advances like that
that make me feel good.
Being involved in the scholarship programs that Reverend
Jackson mentioned, it’s been a real privilege for me because I’ve gotten to
meet a lot of the kids who have gotten these scholarships and hear their story,
hear the things they’ve overcome in order to get as far as they’ve gotten. And
the fact that through this scholarship as they go to college they can focus on
their learning and their full potential, that is something that I feel very, very
good about.
Now, there are statistics that say we’re simply not doing
enough. If you look at minority businesses and their use of Internet
technologies, there the numbers are quite disappointing. Only a few percent, 3
or 4 percent versus about 30 percent of small businesses overall have that
enabling technology.
And yet that technology is fundamental. It’s technology
that allows a small business to do the things that in the past only large
businesses could do, to work together, to attract new customers, to come up
with customized products and it’s no longer an optional thing. And so there
are many programs that are being put together now to get the word out about
that, to spread the examples of where it works, to get people to be optimistic
about diving in and using this technology. Often all it takes is the kind of
encouragement, a little bit of help, an understanding of where the resources
are in the community to put those pieces together.
When we think about the companies, the large corporations,
there are so many things they can do to be helpful to reducing the divide.
Microsoft tries to do its very best in all these areas. Hiring the brightest
minority students: Today in our professional positions we have about 27
percent minorities there, and that’s something that’s gone up very
dramatically. (Applause.)
An area that we’re just in the last few years, focusing on what
Mike Armstrong talked about for AT&T, is this area of procurement, reaching
out to the banking community, the investment banks and in the last year we’ve
more than doubled the business we do both in procurement and in the financial
areas. (Applause.)
I think the solutions here involve both creating demand and
creating supply, and creating that supply means getting more involved in the
educational system, making sure they have the latest in technology and making
sure that the employees of the large companies are reaching out to those
schools and getting involved, getting the computers and technology there but
not just there in a statistical sense, there in a way that they’re used in a
way that really makes a difference that connects to all the kids.
One thing that we’ve seen is that when you have a high ratio
of students to computers it tends to be just a small part of the students that
get comfortable with the computers. It tends to be the boys more that are
there and a bit more pushy and so immediately you get this sense, a lot of kids
get the sense, "Boy, I’m afraid of this, I’m not good at this."
And on the other hand when you get lots of the machines
where people can take them home at night, if they’re portable type machines,
and you can really build it into the curriculum and get everyone to think, "Boy,
this is just a tool, it’s a very important tool to me, it’s a tool that’s on my
side and that I’m comfortable with," then learning is driven forward.
The most advanced programs like that today are not
affordable for all schools and so part of the work that our industry has to do
is constantly bring the price of the technology down, also bring the ease of
use of the technology up.
Let me close by saying that in this quest I bring all of my
optimism to what needs to be done here. If I ever need a reminder of how big
the challenge is all we need to do is raise our sights a little bit and look
beyond our shores and say well, you know, we’ve got a tough problem here in
this country but in many ways this country is the most blessed country in the
world. (Applause.)
And so we need to have goals, we need to reach out to the
world at large, because when we say the world at large, of course, we mean
people who haven’t had the same benefits that we’ve had in this country, and
whether that’s education or health, there is so much more to be done. But
there the inventions of technology are very much on our side. I am really
excited about the spirit that I feel in this room, these kinds of gatherings to
take all of us who believe in these causes to remind us why they’re so
important and rededicate ourselves to getting everybody to have the
opportunities that technology provides.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
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