[liberationtech] Bill Gates on Project Loon vs malaria

[Glassman, Michael]

I think it might be important to realize that access to information and famine and disease are not mutually exclusive to each other.  For instance if Amartya Sen (the Nobel award winning economist) analysis is right famine is not caused by lack of food but by lack of knowledge about access and location to food - something I believe is much more easily overcome through Internet access perhaps.  Dysentery is caused both by lacking access to to potalble water and by not trusting or assimilating methods for water purification (e.g., convincing individuals to use precious resources on boiling water).  Even when clinics are built the individuals have a hard time absorbing them into their everyday lives.

What Google is doing may do more to help the problems Gates is talking about than one off helicopter drops.  Or it may not.  But to consider eradication of famine and disease as separate from information seems more destructive than constructive.

Michael
________________________________
From: liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu [liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of Tom O [winterfilth at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 11:25 PM
To: alps at acm.org; liberationtech
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Bill Gates on Project Loon vs malaria

I think project LOON serves Googles purpose well.

Whether it's altruistic, I'll wait and see.

Certainly disease and famine are a more important and pressing concern in Africa. I will happily stand with Bill & Melinda re this.

I don't think the two issues are comparable, which is where I think Bill goes wrong in his criticism.

On Saturday, August 10, 2013, Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes wrote:
Those comments by Bill Gates are no more than "blows below the belt."
Despicable.

He should complain about spending on "erectile dysfunction" (and so
many other "rich people ailments) research vs. eradication of malaria,
not Internet access, which also is a human right!

Best Regards | Cordiales Saludos | Grato,

Andrés L. Pacheco Sanfuentes
<alps at acm.org<UrlBlockedError.aspx>>
+1 (817) 271-9619


On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Richard Brooks <rrb at acm.org<UrlBlockedError.aspx>> wrote:
> On 08/09/2013 12:25 PM, Kyle Maxwell wrote:>
> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/09/bill-gates-google-project-loon
>>
>> ===
>>
>> Bill Gates criticises Google's Project Loon initiative
>>
>> Former Microsoft chief says low-income countries need more than just
>> internet access
>>
>> ===
>
> On the one hand, clean drinking water is important and
> the fact that little work is done on malaria because it
> effects mainly poor people is disgusting.
>
> On the other hand, I've heard lots of people in the
> countries that would benefit from a cure for
> malaria this year asking about what they can do when
> their government shuts down the Internet. The idea
> that information can still go in or out against government
> wishes is important to them.
>
> I guess people may want to be healthy and free at the
> same time.
>
>
>
>
> --
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