Bill Gates speech at Harvard This essay is about the bill Gates video in which he gives a speech for

the graduates for Harvard 2007 and in the video he talks about the time he was in Harvard and he also talks about a one specific problem and the complexity of the problem and finally he mentions the innovations of this century. Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for him. He used to sit in on lots of classes I hadnt even signed up for and his dorm life was terrific. He lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. He claims Radcliffe was a very great place to live. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging and that it was an amazing privilege to be there. But he did have a big regret he 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. First of all the problem that he mentions is that humanitys 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. For example he 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 like measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease he had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year none of them in the United States. The problem was 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. Also he talks about the complexity of the problem which is to turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact but complexity blocks all three steps because this is so complex we dont know how to help and that is why we look away. For example, we can make market forces work it 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. In the last part he talks about the innovations, he says the defining and ongoing innovations of this age (biotechnology, the computer, the Internet), give us a chance weve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease. 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. For example, the emergence of low-cost personal computers gave

rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating. To conclude this essay we can say that the video was very interesting because in the speech he was trying to motivate his generation to do something for humanity to improve the lives of people around the world and also the video was great because he started his speech with a great sense of humor and ended it exhorting his colleges to do something to make the world a better place.