Bill Gates has it wrong on our basic human needs
It seems that Bill Gates doesn’t fully understand what our basic needs are as human beings. As I wrote in my post on the subject, the ability to connect and communicate with one another is one of the most important of our natural needs. Gates apparently just can’t bring himself to realize what kind of impact connectivity to the Internet will have on the improvement of people’s lives. From here:
Gates described initiatives by Facebook and Google to position online connectivity as a humanitarian concern as ‘a joke’
While Gates, 58, said technology is ‘amazing’, he doesn’t believe it is on the ‘first five rungs’ of basic human needs.
‘I certainly love the IT thing,’ Gates told The Financial Times. ‘But when we want to improve lives, you’ve got to deal with more basic things like child survival, child nutrition.’
‘PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs,’ he added.
Gates’ comments come just a few months after Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook wants to get more of the world’s more than seven billion people online through a partnership with some of the world’s largest mobile technology companies.
Known as Internet.org, the initiative was launched in August and also includes South Korean electronics giant Samsung, Finnish handset maker Nokia and wireless chip maker Qualcomm.
In my post I mentioned 6 of our most basic needs as human beings which are essential for our survival. They’re not, and should not be, based on any hierarchy; they’re all essential and should all be taken care of with equal priority. And the ability to communicate with one another is one of the basic needs that is important not only to guarantee our long term survival, but to improve life in general. As I explained, this is the case even for the most basic organisms in nature, and certainly also for humans:
The cell can learn and evolve by itself, but learning and evolution can happen at an exponential rate if cells can also connect and learn from each other. Moreover, being able to communicate at a molecular level also enables cells to become social and help each other, which further ensures the primary objective. An example of this are social amoeba.
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Humans are social creatures; it’s hardcoded into the fundamental programming that drives us. Even the most introverted people have a need to interact with others. We benefit in many ways from social interaction. We learn from each other by sharing experiences and we can also help and support each other when needed and reach bigger accomplishments. Throughout the ages we’ve gotten better at being able to communicate with each other and now with the Global Brain soon connecting every human being on the entire planet, we see exponential improvements that will be immensely beneficial to us.
I discuss many of the benefits that connectivity to the Internet will have for humankind in my post on the Global Brain. We need to bring as many human brains online as soon as we possibly can to help solve the problems we’re facing today. To say that getting the whole world connected will revolutionize and completely transform the world we live in would be an understatement. At present we cannot even begin to fully imagine the huge benefits this will have for the quality of human life in the future.
So instead of criticizing Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org initiative, as well as Google’s Project Loon initiative, both trying to get the whole world connected to the Internet, I think it would be better if Gates would support them.
I just can’t understand why Gates can’t see the significance that connectivity to the Internet will have for the improvement of people’s lives, especially in the third world. Think about it, what good will it ultimately do for these people in the long term if their children stop dying and if they are freed from diseases such as Malaria, when they continue to live in poverty and continue to be dependent on the “good deeds” of people like Gates? Taking care of “child survival, child nutrition” is just not enough. Access to the wealth of information on the Internet will empower them and help them to become independent in a way that I think no other solution will ever be able to achieve. Instead of keeping people in a perpetual state of dependency on outside help from philanthropists like Gates, let’s give them the tools and most importantly the knowledge that will allow them to start independently taking care of themselves. They, too, deserve to stand on the shoulders of giants.
It seems to me that Gates and other philanthropists and so called humanitarian organizations are still in this very much for the profit. This would explain why Gates doesn’t say anything about the crimes that are being committed against the people in African countries, where their resources are essentially stolen from them by big corporations that make insane amounts of profits — corporations that people like Gates have financial stakes in (watch a documentary titled “Blood Coltan” for an example). It would also explain why Gates is fighting HIV in African countries when in fact it’s known among top scientists that the whole HIV/AIDS business is a huge money making scam that’s needlessly killing thousands of people around the world.
If Gates was really concerned about these people, then instead of playing mister philanthropic nice guy and pretending to the world how good he is by seemingly “giving away” money to help them, he would start publicly telling the governments and corporations to stop exploiting the African people, and to start paying them the money they deserve — the true value of their labor and resources. Give them their fair share of all the billions of dollars corporations make from their resources. That will allow them to start getting out of poverty, to take care of themselves and as a result they won’t have to rely on handouts from people like Gates anymore who eventually get back much more money from the enslavement of these people than they “give” to them. The evidence is out there.
I think the above explains Gates’ apparent shortsightedness, and why he doesn’t like the fact that these people may soon be connected to the Internet, which will not only allow them to get the information and knowledge to start helping themselves, but also to start learning how they are being manipulated and enslaved. Like Dr. Ben Carson said, “when you educate a man you liberate a man,” and nothing can educate a man like the Internet is capable of doing. In the long run this won’t be beneficial to Gates and the money blinded corporations he supports.
Stop being a fucking hypocrite Mr. Gates. If you truly want to help these people, start being politically incorrect and start publicly questioning all the crimes that are being committed against these people. And put some of those billions of yours into Internet.org and Project Loon let’s get these people connected and independent as soon as possible.
Updates
Update 27-12-2013: Read my comments on Gate’s “Year in Review 2013” blog post for more on how Gates is being a hypocrite.
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