A Second Act In An American Life

As you can probably guess, I have mixed feelings about Bill Gates. I admire the great philanthropist Gates for his tremendous generosity and willingness to bring new approaches and enthusiasm to efforts that had become moribund and cynical. But I hate the businessman Gates, with his mediocre and over-marketed products and business strategies of questionable legality. But we don't have to worry about the latter, now that he's retired and the founder's company founders.

The philanthropist Gates released his annual letter recently, in which he makes the case for aid to the developing world. It's a refreshing read, not just for its optimistic tone, but for the practical approach he brings to the subject. He doesn't fall into the rigid ideologies or extremism that dominate current politics, and faces it with intellectual honesty.

One might be tempted to see his pragmatic approach as a product of his background in software. But I find that many people from science and engineering are actually quite ripe for the picking by simplistic ideology. The exact-science nerd is used to intellectual discussions that don't have a lot of vested interest at stake, and trends to have an unrealistically simple view of human psychology. Thus they fall prey to neat and tidy political ideas that are not rooted in the real world.

So I think gates does deserve credit for his humanitarian work, in which he makes me feel like they're is some how for the world.  I never thought I'd feel the developing world has a brighter future than Microsoft, but somehow he's done it.