比尔盖茨哈佛演讲 全文
Remarks of Bill Gates Harvard Commencement June 7, 2007
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 usin 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
amore 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 bed net.
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.
过去30年里，我一直在等待着说这样一句话，―父亲，我一直对您说我将拿
到自己的学位。‖。
我要感谢哈佛及时地授予我学位。我明年要换工作(注：指全力投入比尔及梅琳达基金会的慈善工作)，有了学位我的简历看起来会更好一些。
祝贺今天的哈佛毕业生都直接获得了学位。哈佛校报称我为―哈佛历史上最成功的辍学生‖，这让我感到非常高兴。当我面对同一届毕业生时，我可以
对他们说，―我是失败者中最为成功的。‖
众所周知，当初史蒂夫·鲍尔默(Steve Ballmer)从哈佛商学院退学，我是始作俑者。我并不是一个好榜样，这也是我受邀在你们的毕业典礼上发表演讲
的原因。如果你们都像我一样辍学，那今天就没有人会坐在这里。
对我来说，在哈佛的经历是一段难忘的体验。校园生活总是让人留恋，我曾经上了很多根本没有注册的课。当然，宿舍的生活并不太美好。当时我住在拉德克里夫学院，同一宿舍的很多人经常讨论问题到深夜，因为他们都知道我并不担心早上起不来床。正是在这样的环境下，我成长为反社会集团的领导者。
拉德克里夫是一个适合生活的地方。那时候这里有很多女孩子，而且大多数男生都属于较为死板的类型，因此我的机会很多，你们都知道我的意思。不
过，正是在这里，我明白了拥有机会并不一定能获得成功的道理。(笑)
微软的起步
在哈佛的日子里，最令我难忘的一天是在1975年1月。当时我给
Albuquerque的一家公司打了电话，这家公司已经开始生产全世界首批个人计算
机，我希望向它们销售软件。
最开始我忐忑不安，因为担心这家公司会因为我是学生而挂断电话。但幸运的是，它们没有这样做，而是对我说，―我们还没有准备好，一个月内来我们公司看看吧。‖这对我来说是一个好消息，因为我们当时还没有完成软件开发。从那一刻起，我夜以继日地工作。这一项目虽然价值不大，但它标志着我大学生
活的结束，以及微软的起步。
哈佛给我留下印象最深的是所有人都活力十足，而且非常聪明。在哈佛的日子有快乐，也有失落，但总是充满挑战。尽管我很早离开了哈佛，但那几年
已经足以改变我。在这里，我结识了很多朋友，并想出了很多创意。
最大遗憾
认真回顾过去，我确实有着一大遗憾。
当我离开哈佛时，我并没有意识到这个世界存在着可怕的不平等现象。人们享受的医疗、保健和机会严重不均，很多人生活在绝望的边缘。
我在哈佛学到了很多东西，包括经济和政治方面的新思想，但体会最深
的还是科学的不断进步。
可是，人类的最大进步并不体现在发现和发明上，而是如何利用它们来消除不平等。不管通过何种方式，民主、公共教育、医疗保健、或者是经济合作，
消除不平等才是人类的最大成就。
当我离开校园时，并不知道美国有数百万的青少年享受不到受教育的机会，我也不知道在发展中国家有数百万人生活在极度的贫困之中。
我用了数十年的时间才明白了这些。
你们和我完全不同，你们更了解这个世界上存在的不平等。我希望你们过去几年都曾经认真想过，应当如何应对这样的不平等，以及如何解决这些问题。
假如，如果你愿意付出每周几小时时间和每月几美元，希望这些时间和钱能拯救更多的人，改善更多人的生活。那么，你会将时间和钱花在哪里呢？
对于梅琳达(注：盖茨之妻)和我来说，也存在着同样的问题：应该怎样
做，才能让我们拥有的资源给最多的人带来好处呢？
在讨论这一问题的过程中，梅琳达和我看到一篇关于疾病每年在发展中国家杀死数百万儿童的新闻。这些疾病包括麻疹、疟疾、肺炎、B型肝炎和黄热病，它们在美国已经受到严密的控制。此外，一种我们从未听说的疾病——轮状
病毒每年要杀死50万儿童，但其中没有一名美国儿童。
我们感到非常震惊。既然每年有如此多的儿童因为这些疾病而死，那么
就应当将研发新药、拯救生命放在首位，但事实并非如此。
人人生而平等
如果你们相信―人人生而平等‖，当了解到人们认为有些生命值得拯救，而有些生命不值得时，也会感到震惊。我们会对自己说：―这并不是真的。但是，
如果它是真的，我们就应当努力改变这种情况。‖
因此，我们开始了这样的工作，我们相信别人也会这样做。有时我们会
感到不解：这个世界为什么会允许那么多的孩子死亡呢？
答案很简单，也很残酷。拯救这些孩子的生命并不会带来市场回报，政府也没有为此提供补贴。这些孩子之所以会死亡，主要因为他们的父母没有强大
的市场力量，甚至没有话语权。
但是我和你们都有。
我们今天坐在这里，就在这一时间，世界各地仍在上演着人间惨剧。这让我们感到心碎，我们之所以没有采取任何行动，并不是我们没有同情心，而是
因为我们不知道如何去做。
我们面临的障碍并不是缺乏同情心，实际情况要复杂的多。
要将同情心转化为行动，我们需要看到问题，找到解决方案，并了解最
终结果。但实际情况是，我们很难做到这三点。
即使有了互联网和24小时新闻播报，我们仍然很难真正地了解问题。如果一架飞机坠毁，官方会立即举办新闻发布会。他们将会承诺展开调查，确定
事故原因，并保证今后不会出现同样的情况。
但实际情况却是，飞机失事死亡人数还不足全世界每天因可避免原因死
亡人数的0.5%。
更严重的问题并不是飞机失事，而是全球数以百万计的可避免死亡。 事实上，我们很难获得同后者相关的消息。新闻媒体希望获得新消息，而数以百万计的人因贫穷和疾病死亡并不是新消息。因此，这样的消息很难出现在媒体报道中，从而更容易被人们所忽略。另一方面，即使我们看到这样的报道，
也不太情愿仔细阅读。因为情况过于复杂，我们不知道如何提供帮助。在这种情
况下，我们大多数情况会将视线转向其它方向。
看到问题只是第一步，我们要做的下一步是降低问题的复杂度，并找到
解决方案。
如果我们想让自己的同情心发挥作用，找到解决方案非常必要。因为只有这样，我们才能确保同情心没有被浪费。当然，由于大部分问题都很复杂，要
找到解决方案并不容易。
那么，我们又应当如何降低复杂度，找到解决方案呢？我认为可以分为四个阶段：确定一个目标、发现最有效的方式、为这种方式找到理想的技术、以
及开发最优秀的应用，例如用于治病的药品。
我们要做的最后一步就是衡量工作的成果，并与他人共享我们的成功与失
败。
比尔盖茨哈佛演讲 全文
Remarks of Bill Gates Harvard Commencement June 7, 2007
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 usin 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
amore 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 bed net.
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.
过去30年里，我一直在等待着说这样一句话，―父亲，我一直对您说我将拿
到自己的学位。‖。
我要感谢哈佛及时地授予我学位。我明年要换工作(注：指全力投入比尔及梅琳达基金会的慈善工作)，有了学位我的简历看起来会更好一些。
祝贺今天的哈佛毕业生都直接获得了学位。哈佛校报称我为―哈佛历史上最成功的辍学生‖，这让我感到非常高兴。当我面对同一届毕业生时，我可以
对他们说，―我是失败者中最为成功的。‖
众所周知，当初史蒂夫·鲍尔默(Steve Ballmer)从哈佛商学院退学，我是始作俑者。我并不是一个好榜样，这也是我受邀在你们的毕业典礼上发表演讲
的原因。如果你们都像我一样辍学，那今天就没有人会坐在这里。
对我来说，在哈佛的经历是一段难忘的体验。校园生活总是让人留恋，我曾经上了很多根本没有注册的课。当然，宿舍的生活并不太美好。当时我住在拉德克里夫学院，同一宿舍的很多人经常讨论问题到深夜，因为他们都知道我并不担心早上起不来床。正是在这样的环境下，我成长为反社会集团的领导者。
拉德克里夫是一个适合生活的地方。那时候这里有很多女孩子，而且大多数男生都属于较为死板的类型，因此我的机会很多，你们都知道我的意思。不
过，正是在这里，我明白了拥有机会并不一定能获得成功的道理。(笑)
微软的起步
在哈佛的日子里，最令我难忘的一天是在1975年1月。当时我给
Albuquerque的一家公司打了电话，这家公司已经开始生产全世界首批个人计算
机，我希望向它们销售软件。
最开始我忐忑不安，因为担心这家公司会因为我是学生而挂断电话。但幸运的是，它们没有这样做，而是对我说，―我们还没有准备好，一个月内来我们公司看看吧。‖这对我来说是一个好消息，因为我们当时还没有完成软件开发。从那一刻起，我夜以继日地工作。这一项目虽然价值不大，但它标志着我大学生
活的结束，以及微软的起步。
哈佛给我留下印象最深的是所有人都活力十足，而且非常聪明。在哈佛的日子有快乐，也有失落，但总是充满挑战。尽管我很早离开了哈佛，但那几年
已经足以改变我。在这里，我结识了很多朋友，并想出了很多创意。
最大遗憾
认真回顾过去，我确实有着一大遗憾。
当我离开哈佛时，我并没有意识到这个世界存在着可怕的不平等现象。人们享受的医疗、保健和机会严重不均，很多人生活在绝望的边缘。
我在哈佛学到了很多东西，包括经济和政治方面的新思想，但体会最深
的还是科学的不断进步。
可是，人类的最大进步并不体现在发现和发明上，而是如何利用它们来消除不平等。不管通过何种方式，民主、公共教育、医疗保健、或者是经济合作，
消除不平等才是人类的最大成就。
当我离开校园时，并不知道美国有数百万的青少年享受不到受教育的机会，我也不知道在发展中国家有数百万人生活在极度的贫困之中。
我用了数十年的时间才明白了这些。
你们和我完全不同，你们更了解这个世界上存在的不平等。我希望你们过去几年都曾经认真想过，应当如何应对这样的不平等，以及如何解决这些问题。
假如，如果你愿意付出每周几小时时间和每月几美元，希望这些时间和钱能拯救更多的人，改善更多人的生活。那么，你会将时间和钱花在哪里呢？
对于梅琳达(注：盖茨之妻)和我来说，也存在着同样的问题：应该怎样
做，才能让我们拥有的资源给最多的人带来好处呢？
在讨论这一问题的过程中，梅琳达和我看到一篇关于疾病每年在发展中国家杀死数百万儿童的新闻。这些疾病包括麻疹、疟疾、肺炎、B型肝炎和黄热病，它们在美国已经受到严密的控制。此外，一种我们从未听说的疾病——轮状
病毒每年要杀死50万儿童，但其中没有一名美国儿童。
我们感到非常震惊。既然每年有如此多的儿童因为这些疾病而死，那么
就应当将研发新药、拯救生命放在首位，但事实并非如此。
人人生而平等
如果你们相信―人人生而平等‖，当了解到人们认为有些生命值得拯救，而有些生命不值得时，也会感到震惊。我们会对自己说：―这并不是真的。但是，
如果它是真的，我们就应当努力改变这种情况。‖
因此，我们开始了这样的工作，我们相信别人也会这样做。有时我们会
感到不解：这个世界为什么会允许那么多的孩子死亡呢？
答案很简单，也很残酷。拯救这些孩子的生命并不会带来市场回报，政府也没有为此提供补贴。这些孩子之所以会死亡，主要因为他们的父母没有强大
的市场力量，甚至没有话语权。
但是我和你们都有。
我们今天坐在这里，就在这一时间，世界各地仍在上演着人间惨剧。这让我们感到心碎，我们之所以没有采取任何行动，并不是我们没有同情心，而是
因为我们不知道如何去做。
我们面临的障碍并不是缺乏同情心，实际情况要复杂的多。
要将同情心转化为行动，我们需要看到问题，找到解决方案，并了解最
终结果。但实际情况是，我们很难做到这三点。
即使有了互联网和24小时新闻播报，我们仍然很难真正地了解问题。如果一架飞机坠毁，官方会立即举办新闻发布会。他们将会承诺展开调查，确定
事故原因，并保证今后不会出现同样的情况。
但实际情况却是，飞机失事死亡人数还不足全世界每天因可避免原因死
亡人数的0.5%。
更严重的问题并不是飞机失事，而是全球数以百万计的可避免死亡。 事实上，我们很难获得同后者相关的消息。新闻媒体希望获得新消息，而数以百万计的人因贫穷和疾病死亡并不是新消息。因此，这样的消息很难出现在媒体报道中，从而更容易被人们所忽略。另一方面，即使我们看到这样的报道，
也不太情愿仔细阅读。因为情况过于复杂，我们不知道如何提供帮助。在这种情
况下，我们大多数情况会将视线转向其它方向。
看到问题只是第一步，我们要做的下一步是降低问题的复杂度，并找到
解决方案。
如果我们想让自己的同情心发挥作用，找到解决方案非常必要。因为只有这样，我们才能确保同情心没有被浪费。当然，由于大部分问题都很复杂，要
找到解决方案并不容易。
那么，我们又应当如何降低复杂度，找到解决方案呢？我认为可以分为四个阶段：确定一个目标、发现最有效的方式、为这种方式找到理想的技术、以
及开发最优秀的应用，例如用于治病的药品。
我们要做的最后一步就是衡量工作的成果，并与他人共享我们的成功与失
败。