Bill Gates: Visions of the Future in 50 Years
Businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates looks towards a future of sustainable energy and worldwide education.
[Speaker]
Bill Gates is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. Gates is the former chief executive and chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded with Paul Allen.
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Bill Gates: Visions of the Future
Fifty years from now a far better place
Well I’m very optimistic about where the world will be fifty years from now. I hope I’m around to see it, but I think we can already see the shape of things in some ways.
The human population which was growing at a very rapid rate; is now growing at a slower rate because as we become successful, families have chosen to have less children and so we can see a peak population that makes it possible to think about living within a resource constraints that we have.
We can also see a decline in violence. It’s amazing now because we hear about all the violent things around the world but every century the world has had a lot less war, a lot less violent deaths and we’ve come to value the work that’s been done, but in other countries; making great products and really think together about humanity’s common future. The pace of innovation will need to surprise us in some ways.
What form this great energy source will be that, will avoid us destroying the environment. That’s an invention, that’s very very important. How much care will we give towards making sure that the poorest several billion are not completely left out and there’ve been a little bit progress there, but the inequity level still should concern us quite a bit and then there are things that are harder to predict. For example, how important will robots be in fifty years?
Maybe twenty years ago people when they first heard about robots thought, “Wow, that’s pretty scary. What does it mean?”
But then when it didn’t really happen, they stop thinking about it, it’s almost like only a curiosity in the movies or toys. And yet clearly in the decades ahead the cost, the capabilities will mimic what we’ve seen in science fiction and so we have to see how do we take advantage of that.
As we’re living longer, how do we find fulfillment, what does the working career look like in terms of timing. The world will have aged on average and that brings with it very interesting problems. And so there is it’s not without challenges, but the path of extended life span, more science, more global understanding, sense of common humanity, more education, more ability to watch a great course and not give up the curiosity that you’re born with but try to think about the world and where it can go, and how you can contribute to it. I think all of these things are taking more advantage of our innate capabilities and will allow us to make fifty years from now a far better place than even what we have today.
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