My broad sense of this is that authors like Smil really paint the clear picture, and once you see that, it's kind of Oh, of course. That's such a primal thing to all these physical services that we take for granted.
Unfortunately, in rich-world health, innovation is both your friend and your enemy. Innovation is inventing organ replacement, joint replacement. We're inventing ways of doing new things that cost $300,000 and take people in their 70s and, on average, give them an extra, say, two or three years of life. And then you have to say, given finite resources, should we fire two or three teachers to do this operation?
What we're really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.
Test scores aren't perfect, but having a test score for math or reading or other things that we can objectively measure is a meaningful component that makes a lot of sense.
I have to admit that business-type thoughts do sneak into my head: I hope our customers pay us, I hope this stuff is decent, I hope we get it done on time. The little additions and subtractions that one has to do. Take sales, take costs and try to get that big positive number at the bottom.
This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.
Microsoft went into orbit because it had a booster rocket attached to it called IBM.
The need to communicate effectively with your customers will come up again and again.
When you are failing, you are forced to be creative, to dig deep and think, night and day.
I think philanthropy is also growing and catching on. Figuring out how the philanthropy sector, which is quite small compared to the private sector, which is the biggest by far, and then the governments, you know, even in these poor countries over time has to take on these key responsibilities. How does philanthropy accelerate that? Drive the kind of innovations, make sure they get used well. So it plays this kind of special role.
