Gates has been proven right and is putting his foundation's $ where his mouth is.
"The rush to close the digital divide began in earnest at Davos in 1998 during the height of the dot-com era, driven by American executives like John Chambers of Cisco and John Gage of Sun Microsystems. Committees were formed, money was committed and during the next three years the idea of digital equity became a rallying cry for the world's dot-com elite.
"It was really cool, but in the end we got nothing done," one executive candidly acknowledged.
At the time, Mr. Gates was a notable skeptic, arguing that it was more important to address basic life necessities - health and food, for example - before connecting the world's poorest citizens to the Internet.
Although he was widely criticized for his remarks then, he now appears to have been vindicated. Mr. Gates was in the thick of the plenary discussions at the 2005 Davos forum - considering ways of eliminating poverty and disease that do not encompass information technology."
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