You would expect Bill Gates to be at the at the front of the march when it comes to campaigning for the whole world to be online. In response to Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to bring the whole world online, however, Gates insisted that internet accessibility shouldn’t be our number one priority. Despite the fact that Gates is still Microsoft’s chairman, he spends most of his time focusing on philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates told the Financial Times:

Hmm, which is more important, connectivity or malaria vaccine? If you think connectivity is the key thing, that’s great. I don’t. As a priority? It’s a joke.

In the past, Gates has criticised Google’s Project Loon — a plan to bring internet access to Africa by using giant balloons. He says it wouldn’t do much good if the people receiving the internet were dying of malaria. Which is quite right.

The world is not flat and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs. We need children not to die, we need people to have an opportunity to get a good education.

Nice one, Bill.

[Source : The Verge]