比尔.盖茨，微软公司创始人之一，前微软公司主席兼首席软件架构师，被誉为“世界首富”、“商业天才”等。这是其在2008年哈佛大学的演讲，虽然年代久远，但其中谈到的很多事情，他的学生时代、他的退学经历以及他眼中人生最有意义的事情，依然十分具有启发性。　　

　　President Bok, former PresidentRudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation andthe Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, thegraduates:

　　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 bechanging my job next year … and it will be nice to finallyhave a college degree on my resume.

　　I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more directroute to your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has calledme "Harvard's most successful dropout." I guess that makes mevaledictorian of my own special class … I did the best ofeveryone who failed.

　　But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got SteveBallmer to drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence. That's why I wasinvited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewerof you might be here today.

　　Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academiclife was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn't even signedup 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 discussingthings, 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 eachother as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

　　Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more womenup there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combinationoffered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned thesad 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 hadbegun making the world's first personal computers. I offered to sell themsoftware.

　　I worried that they would realize I was just a student in adorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: "We're not quite ready, comesee us in a month," which was a good thing, because we hadn't written thesoftware yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extracredit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning ofa remarkable journey with Microsoft.

　　What I remember above all about Harvard was being in themidst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating,intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was anamazing privilege – and though I left early, I wastransformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas Iworked on.

　　But taking a serious look back … I dohave one big regret.

　　I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awfulinequities in the world – the appalling disparities ofhealth, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives ofdespair.

　　I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economicsand 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 reduceinequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality healthcare, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity isthe highest human achievement.

　　I left campus knowing little about the millions of youngpeople cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And Iknew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty anddisease in developing countries.

　　It took me decades to find out.

　　You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You knowmore about the world's inequities than the classes that came before. In youryears here, I hope you've had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we canfinally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

　　Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had afew 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 thegreatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

　　For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how canwe do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

　　During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I readan article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poorcountries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country.Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had nevereven 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 ofchildren were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priorityto discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under adollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren't beingdelivered.

　　If you believe that every life has equal value, it'srevolting 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 deservesto be the priority of our giving."

　　So we began our work in the same way anyone here wouldbegin it. We asked: "How could the world let these children die?"

　　The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not rewardsaving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. Sothe children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in themarket and no voice in the system.

　　But you and I have both.

　　We can make market forces work better for the poor if wecan develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretchthe reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at leastmake a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. Wealso can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in waysthat better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

　　If we can find approaches that meet theneeds of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes forpoliticians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in theworld. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a consciouseffort to answer this challenge will change the world.

　　I am optimistic that we can do this, butI talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: "Inequity hasbeen 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, haveseen 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. Ifwe had known how to help, we would have acted.

　　The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is toomuch complexity.

　　To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see asolution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

　　Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, itis still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When anairplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promiseto 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 doeverything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half ofone percent."

　　The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millionsof preventable deaths.

　　We don't read much about these deaths. The media coverswhat'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 dosee it or read about it, it's difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It'shard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don't know howto help. And so we look away.

　　If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, wecome to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

　　Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the mostof our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization orindividual 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 throughfour predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach,discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make thesmartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it's something sophisticated, like a drug, or somethingsimpler, like a bednet.

　　The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, ofcourse, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. Theideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a singledose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research.But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, wehave to work with what we have in hand – and the bestprevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.

　　Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. Thisis the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20thcentury – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

　　The final step – after seeing theproblem and finding an approach – is to measure the impactof your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn fromyour efforts.

　　You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to beable to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have tobe 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 moreinvestment from business and government.

　　But if you want to inspire people to participate, you haveto 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 aglobal 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 wasthe most boring panel I've ever been on – ever. So boringeven I couldn't bear it.

　　What made that experience especially striking was that Ihad just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some pieceof software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I lovegetting people excited about software – but why can't wegenerate even more excitement for saving lives?

　　You can't get people excited unless you can help them seeand feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complexquestion.

　　Still, I'm optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with usforever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been withus forever. They are new – they can help us make the mostof our caring – and that's why the future can be differentfrom the past.

　　The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – giveus a chance we've never had before to end extreme poverty and end death frompreventable disease.

　　Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencementand announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: "Ithink one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexitythat the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make itexceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisementof the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at allthe real significance of the situation."

　　Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my classgraduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the worldsmaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

　　The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to apowerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning andcommunicating.

　　The magical thing about this network is not just that itcollapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramaticallyincreases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on thesame problem – and that scales up the rate of innovationto a staggering degree.

　　网络的神奇之处，不仅仅是它缩短了物理距离，使得天涯若比邻。它还极大地增加了怀有共同想法的人们聚集在一起的机会，我们可以为了解决同一个问题，一起共同工作。这就大大加快了革新的进程，发展速度简直快得让人震惊。

　　At the same time, for every person in the world who hasaccess to this technology, five people don't. That means many creative mindsare left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence andrelevant experience who don't have the technology to hone their talents orcontribute their ideas to the world.

　　与此同时，世界上有条件上网的人，只是全部人口的六分之一。这意味着，还有许多具有创造性的人们，没有加入到我们的讨论中来。那些有着实际的操作经验和相关经历的聪明人，却没有技术来帮助他们，将他们的天赋或者想法与全世界分享。

　　We need as many people as possible to have access to thistechnology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what humanbeings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just fornational governments, but for universities, corporations, smallerorganizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, andmeasure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, anddesperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

　　Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one ofthe great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

　　What for?

　　There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, thestudents, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve thelives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvarddedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never evenhear 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 askyourselves:

　　Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggestproblems?

　　Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world'sworst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of globalpoverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept outof school … the children who die from diseases we cancure?

　　Should the world's most privileged people learn about thelives 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 admittedhere – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. Afew days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read alouda letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very illwith cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver hermessage, and at the close of the letter she said: "From those to whom muchis given, much is expected."

　　When you consider what those of is here in this Yard havebeen given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect fromus.

　　In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort eachof the graduates here to take on an issue – a complexproblem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it thefocus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have to do thatto make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power ofthe Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see thebarriers, and find ways to cut through them.

　　Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on thebig inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

　　You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As youleave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You haveawareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness,you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if youabandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. Youhave 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 fromnow and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hopeyou will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, butalso on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in commonwith you but their humanity.

　　Good luck.

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