Bill Gates & President Bill Clinton: Looking Forward and Maintaining Optimism-Exclusive Interview
For more from Bill Gates and President Clinton, check out the December 2013 issue of WIRED.
Released on 11/12/2013
Both of you are optimists.
Did you ever have doubts about that
or is it just both your natures, just to press on?
I don't know, you spend too many days home
in Washington D.C. you can have brief moments
where you wonder is this system that's worked so well
for hundreds of years somehow hit a rot.
But in general, no, I'm very optimistic.
I mean we've got innovation, whether it's new vaccines,
new seeds, new ways of delivering things, productivity.
Even in education,
we've got people in Rwanda
trying out MOOCS to see if they work and their situation.
And it'll take a decade of refinement.
But the pace of innovation is faster today than ever.
And, so, you can be impatient about getting it out there.
But nothing's really taken away my optimism.
The whole history of humanity is just one long battle
between conflict and cooperation and between us and them.
And, basically, we're here today because we kept expanding
the definition of us, whoever the us was
and shrinking the definition of them.
So, yeah, this is tough now
but we've had a lot of periods of bitter conflict.
And there's a lot of complex, psychological
identity questions in American politics today
aggravated by this long, stagnant economy, for most people.
But we'll get through it.
And the trajectory is still good.
(quirky music)
Starring: Bill Gates, President Bill Clinton
Photography and video courtesy of:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Prashant Panjiar
Frederic Courbet
Michael Hanson
Kepler
Clinton Foundation/Max W. Orenstein
www.clintonfoundation.org
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