빌 게이츠 하버드대 명예 법학박사 학위 수여 강연

빌 게이츠가 7일 하버드대 학위수여식에서 명예 법학박사 학위를 받고 행한 강연

Remarks of Bill Gates
Harvard Commencement
(Text as prepared for delivery)

President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege ? and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world ? the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries ? but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity ? reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how ? in this age of accelerating technology ? we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause ? and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. one disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year ? none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism ? if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end ? because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing ? not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.

We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new ? and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action ? and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares ? and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have ? whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand ? and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working ? and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century ? which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step ? after seeing the problem and finding an approach ? is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work ? so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life ? then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on ? ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software ? but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?

You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that ? is a complex question.

Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new ? they can help us make the most of our caring ? and that’s why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age ? biotechnology, the computer, the Internet ? give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem ? and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for?

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors ? the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions ? you will answer with your policies.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here ? never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given ? in talent, privilege, and opportunity ? there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue ? a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

Good luck.

 

빌 게이츠의 `창조적 자본주의론` [중앙일보]

`입학 34년 만에 하버드 졸업장` 빌 게이츠

"창조적 자본주의로 불평등 없애자" '창조적 자본주의(creative capitalism)'. 미국 최대 정보기술(IT) 기업인 마이크로소프트(MS)를 세워 세계 제일의 부자가 된 빌 게이츠가 던진 새로운 화두다. 그는 자신이 중퇴했던 하버드대 졸업식에서 7일 명예 졸업장과 법학박사 학위를 받고 연설하면서 졸업생들에게 불평등 문제를 고민할 것을 당부했다. 자본주의의 양대 축인 시장과 기술혁신을 활용해 가난과 질병으로 인한 인류 불평등 문제를 해결하자는 것이다. 내년 MS 경영에서 물러나 자선사업에 전념할 예정인 그가 인류를 위해 어떤 구상을 하고 있는지가 이날 연설에 담겨 있다. 미국 마이크로소프트(MS)사 창립자인 빌 게이츠(51) 회장은 7일 "창조적 자본주의(creative capitalism)로 세계에 만연하는 질병과 가난.불평등을 없애자"고 말했다. 1975년 하버드대 3년 때 중퇴한 그는 이날 하버드대 졸업식 연설에서 이 같은 화두를 던졌다. 입학 34년 만에 명예 졸업장과 명예 법학박사 학위를 함께 받은 게이츠는 "(지구상에) 희망이 없다고 생각하는 회의론자들은 '불평등은 태초부터 있었고, 지구에 종말이 올 때까지도 우리와 함께 존재할 것'이라고 말하지만 나는 전혀 동의하지 않는다"며 '창조적 자본주의'로 지구의 문제를 극복할 수 있다고 역설했다. 게이츠는 '창조적 자본주의'의 개념을 이렇게 설명했다. "우리는 시장의 힘(market forces)을 가난한 사람을 위해 쓸 수 있다. 만일 (정부와 기업이) 시장의 힘을 확장할 수 있다면 더욱 많은 사람이 돈을 벌 것이고, 생계를 유지할 수 있게 될 것이다. 그건 심각한 불평등에 시달리는 사람들을 돕는 것이다." 그는 "만일 우리가 기업이 시장에서 이윤을, 정치가 표를 추구하는 방식으로 가난한 사람의 필요를 충족하는 방안(창조적 자본주의)을 찾을 수 있다면 이 세상의 불평등을 줄이는 지속가능한 길을 발견할 수 있을 것"이라고 강조했다. 게이츠는 "생명공학과 개인용 컴퓨터, 인터넷으로 대변되는 이 시대의 혁신으로 가난을 근절할 수 있다"고 전망했다. 또 "예방할 수 있는 질병 때문에 사람이 사망하는 일도 없앨 수 있다"고 말했다. 자본주의의 두 기둥인 시장과 기술 혁신을 잘 활용하면 가난과 불평등.질병의 문제를 해결할 수 있다는 얘기다. 그는 시민의 힘으로 정부의 역할을 바꿀 수 있다는 주장도 했다. "우리는 각국 정부에 대해 납세자가 추구하는 가치(불평등 해소 등)를 더 잘 반영하는 방향으로 우리의 세금을 쓰게끔 압박을 가할 수 있다"고 말했다. 그러면서 "이런 문제의 해답을 찾겠다는 의식적인 노력이야말로 세상을 바꿀 수 있다"고 강조했다. 게이츠는 졸업생들에게 "여러분은 내가 하버드대학에 다닐 때 배우지 못했던 기술을 습득하고 있으며, 세상의 불평등에 대해서도 우리 세대보다 잘 안다"며 "여러분이 앞으로 전문적인 성취보다 세상 불평등 해결을 위해 얼마나 잘 봉사했는지를 기준으로 자신을 평가하기를 바란다"고 말했다. 미국의 기업 소식 전문 온라인 매체인 'e-위크'는 "기업과 정부 지도자들에게 기술 혁신과 성장으로 축적한 부를 좀 더 가치있게 쓰라고 주문한 것"이라고 해석했다. 올 하버드대 졸업식에는 빌 게이츠 마이크로소프트(MS) 회장과 함께 빌 클린턴 전 미국 대통령도 연사로 나와 참석 티켓이 큰 인기를 누렸다. '클래스 데이(졸업반 학생이 주관해 외부 연사를 초청하는 행사)' 졸업기념 행사(6일)와 7일 게이츠 회장이 연설한 졸업식(7일) 티켓 수십 장이 '크레이그스 리스트'를 비롯한 온라인 거래 사이트에 매물로 나와 장당 최고 100달러에 판매됐을 정도다. 하버드대는 주요 행사 때마다 학생들에게 가족과 친구들을 초대할 수 있도록 티켓을 한 사람당 몇 장씩 비매품으로 배부해 왔다. 워싱턴=이상일 특파원 ■ 졸업식 연설 … "아버지, 늘 말했잖아요. 언젠가 돌아와 학위 받을 거라고 … " "나는 이 말을 하려고 30년 이상을 기다렸다. '아버지, 내가 항상 말했잖아요. 언젠가 하버드로 돌아와 학위를 받을 것이라고.'" 세계 최고의 갑부이면서 최고의 자선사업가인 빌 게이츠 마이크로소프트(MS) 회장은 7일 하버드대 졸업식장에서 명예학위를 받은 감격을 이렇게 토로했다. 스티븐 하이만 하버드대 교무처장은 "게이츠의 친구인 스티브 발머(현 MS 최고경영자)를 비롯한 다른 학우들이 시험 공부하느라 정신없을 때 게이츠는 개인용 컴퓨터 발명이라는 혁명을 구상하고 있었다"고 그를 소개했다. 게이츠는 연설 서두에서 "크림슨(하버드대 학생 신문)이 나를 하버드대 중퇴자 중 가장 성공한 사람이라고 부른 것을 행복하게 생각한다"고 말했다. 그러면서 "만일 내가 여러분의 입학 오리엔테이션 때 연설을 했다면 (학생들이 중퇴했을 것이므로) 지금 이 자리엔 훨씬 적은 숫자의 학생이 나왔을 것"이라고 농을 던졌다. 다음은 연설 요지. ◆"하버드대에선 세상의 불평등 몰라"=하버드대에서 가장 기억에 남는 것 중 하나는 1975년 1월 세계 최초로 개인용 컴퓨터를 만들기 시작했다는 뉴멕시코주 앨버커키의 한 회사에 전화를 걸었을 때다. 나는 그 회사에 소프트웨어를 팔겠다고 제의했다. 그들은 구매할 준비가 되지 않았다며 한 달 뒤에 연락하라고 했다. 아직 소프트웨어를 완성하지 못했을 때라 잘됐다고 생각하고 일을 마무리하는 데 열중했다. 그게 학업을 중단하고 MS와의 여행을 시작한 계기다. (하버드대 생활을) 돌이켜보면 한 가지 큰 유감이 있다. 세상에 지독한 불평등, 즉 수백만 명을 절망에 빠뜨리는 건강과 부(富), 기회의 불균형이 있다는 걸 깨닫지 못하고 하버드대를 떠난 것이다. 나는 하버드대에 다닐 때 경제학과 정치학에서 새로운 아이디어를 많이 얻었고, 과학의 진보를 이룬 위대한 발견에 대해 배웠다. 그러나 인간애의 위대한 진보(humanity's greatest advances)는 이런 발견들을 어떻게 불평등을 없애는 데 적용하는가에 달려 있다는 점은 당시엔 몰랐다. ◆"특권층은 일반인의 삶을 알아야"=이 시대에 진행되고 있는 혁신은 우리에게 가난과 질병을 극복할 수 있는 기회를 부여하고 있다. 값싼 개인용 컴퓨터의 출현으로 문제 파악과 해결책 마련에 도움을 주는 강력한 네트워크 형성이 가능해졌다. 이로 인해 모든 이가 여러분의 이웃이 되고, 같은 문제를 해결하기 위한 많은 훌륭한 생각이 한데 결합할 수 있게 됐다. 이는 인간이 서로 도울 수 있는 혁명을 촉발한 것이므로 가능한 한 많은 이가 이 기술에 접근할 수 있어야 한다. 하버드대 교수.졸업생.학생과 후원자들이 그들의 힘을 이 세상 사람들의 삶을 개선하는 데 써야 하는 건 두말할 필요가 없다. 여러분처럼 세상에서 가장 큰 특권을 누리는 사람들이 아무 특권이 없는 이들의 삶에 대해 알아야 하지 않겠는가(Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged?). 나는 오늘 여러분이 세상의 심각한 불평등이라는 이 한 가지 복잡한 문제를 택해 그에 관한 전문가가 되라고 권하고 싶다. 그리고 행동가가 되라. 그러면 여러분은 인생에서 가장 훌륭한 경험을 하게 될 것이다. ◆"시간과 돈을 불평등 해소에 투자하라"=기술이 급속히 발달하는 시대에 사는 여러분이 이 불평등을 어떻게 해결할지 생각해 보라. 여러분이 일주일에 몇 시간, 한 달에 몇 달러를 이 일에 쓴다고 상상해 보라. (내 아내) 멜린다와 나의 경우도 마찬가지다. '어떻게 하면 우리가 가진 자원을 많은 이를 위해 쓸 수 있을까(How can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have?)'라고 생각했다. 이를 의논하던 중 우리는 기사를 읽었다. 이 나라에선 아무 문제가 되지 않는 병으로 가난한 나라의 수백만 어린이가 매년 사망한다는 내용이었다. 어떻게 이렇게 많은 아이가 죽을 수 있을까. 답은 간단하다. 시장이 아이들의 생명을 구하는 일에 관심이 없고, 정부도 지원을 하지 않기 때문이다.