比尔盖茨演讲.docx

1、比尔盖茨演讲比尔盖茨夫妇2014斯坦福大学毕业演讲2014-06-25 15:31:06来源：沪江英语 编辑：huangqiaoxiao点击：次比尔盖茨夫妇日前出席斯坦福大学第123届毕业典礼并致辞，他们在致辞中鼓励毕业生，不管是在逆境还是在顺境，都要保持乐观的心大胆往前走，和创造自己的人生。Stanford University.BILL GATES: Congratulations, class of 2014!(Cheers).Melinda and I are excited to be here.It would be a thrill for anyone to be invite

2、d to speak at a Stanford commencement, but its especially gratifying for us.Stanford is rapidly becoming the favorite university for members of our family, and its long been a favorite university for Microsoft and our foundation.Our formula has been to get the smartest, most creative people working

3、on the most important problems.It turns out that a disproportionate number of those people are at Stanford.(Cheers).Right now, we have more than 30 foundation research projects underway here.When we want to learn more about the immune system to help cure the worst diseases, we work with Stanford.Whe

4、n we want to understand the changing landscape of higher education in the United States, so that more low-income students get college degrees, we work with Stanford.This is where genius lives.Theres a flexibility of mind here, an openness to change, an eagerness for whats new.This is where people co

5、me to discover the future, and have fun doing it.MELINDA GATES: Now, some people call you all nerds and we hear that you claim that label with pride.(Cheers and Applause).BILL GATES: Well, so do we.(Cheers and Applause).BILL GATES: My normal glasses really arent all that different.(Laughter).There a

6、re so many remarkable things going on here at this campus, but if Melinda and I had to put into one word what we love most about Stanford, its the optimism.Theres an infectious feeling here that innovation can solve almost every problem.Thats the belief that drove me in 1975 to leave a college in th

7、e suburbs of Boston and go on an endless leave of absence.(Laughter).I believed that the magic of computers and software would empower people everywhere and make the world much, much better.Its been 40 years since then, and 20 years since Melinda and I were married.We are both more optimistic now th

8、an ever. But on our journey, our optimism evolved.We would like to tell you what we learned and talk to you today about how your optimism and ours can do more for more people.When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft, we wanted to bring the power of computers and software to the people, and that was t

9、he kind of rhetoric we used.One of the pioneering books in the field had a raised fist on the cover, and it was called Computer Lib.At that time, only big businesses could buy computers.We wanted to offer the same power to regular people and democratize computing.By the 1990s, we saw how profoundly

10、personal computers could empower people, but that success created a new dilemma.If rich kids got computers and poor kids didnt, then technology would make inequality worse.That ran counter to our core belief.Technology should benefit everyone.So we worked to close the digital divide.I made it a prio

11、rity at Microsoft, and Melinda and I made it an early priority at our Foundation.Donating personal computers to public libraries to make sure that everyone had access.The digital divide was a focus of mine in 1997, when I took my first trip to South Africa.I went there on business so I spent most of

12、 my time in meetings in downtown Johannesburg.I stayed in the home of one of the richest families in South Africa.It had only been three years since the election of Nelson Mandela marked the end of apartheid.When I sat down for dinner with my hosts, they used a bell to call the butler.After dinner,

13、the women and men separated and the men smoked cigars.I thought, good thing I read Jane Austen, or I wouldnt have known what was going on.(Laughter).But the next day I went to Soweto, the poor township southwest of Johannesburg, that had been the center of the anti-apartheid movement.It was a short

14、distance from the city into the township, but the entry was sudden, jarring and harsh.I passed into a world completely unlike the one I came from.My visit to Soweto became an early lesson in how naive I was.Microsoft was donating computers and software to a community center there.The kind of thing w

15、e did in the United States.But it became clear to me, very quickly, that this was not the United States.I had seen statistics on poverty, but I had never really seen poverty.The people there lived in corrugated tin shacks with no electricity, no water, no toilets.Most people didnt wear shoes.They wa

16、lked barefoot along the streets, except there were no streets, just ruts in the mud.The community center had no consistent source of power.So they rigged up an extension cord that ran 200 feet from the center to the diesel generator outside.Looking at this setup, I knew the minute the reporters left

17、, the generator would get moved to a more urgent task.And the people who used the community center would go back to worrying about challenges that couldnt be solved by a personal computer.When I gave my prepared remarks to the press, I said Soweto is a milestone.There are major decisions ahead about

18、 whether technology will leave the developing world behind.This is to close the gap.But as I read those words, I knew they werent super relevant.What I didnt say was, by the way, were not focused on the fact that half a million people on this continent are dying every year from malaria.But we are su

19、re as hell going to bring you computers.Before I went to Soweto, I thought I understood the worlds problems but I was blind to many of the most important ones.I was so taken aback by what I saw that I had to ask myself, did I still believe that innovation could solve the worlds toughest problems?I p

20、romised myself that before I came back to Africa, I would find out more about what keeps people poor.Over the years, Melinda and I did learn more about the pressing needs of the poor.On a later trip to South Africa, I paid a visit to a hospital for patients with MDR-TB, multi-drug resistant tubercul

21、osis, a disease with a cure rate of under 50%.I remember that hospital as a place of despair.It was a giant open ward, with a sea of patients shuffling around in pajamas, wearing masks.There was one floor just for children, including some babies lying in bed.They had a little school for kids who wer

22、e well enough to learn, but many of the children couldnt make it, and the hospital didnt seem to know whether it was worth it to keep the school open.I talked to a patient there in her early 30s.She had been a worker at a TB hospital when she came down with a cough.She went to a doctor and he told h

23、er said she had drug-resistant TB.She was later diagnosed with AIDS.She wasnt going to live much longer, but there were plenty of MDR patients waiting to take her bed when she vacated it.This was hell with a waiting list.But seeing this hell didnt reduce my optimism.It channeled it.I got into the ca

24、r as I left and I told the doctor we were working with I know MDR-TB is hard to cure, but we must do something for these people.And, in fact, this year, we are entering phase three with the new TB drug regime for patients who respond, instead of a 50% cure rate after 18 months for $2,000, we get an

25、80% cure rate after six months for under $100.(Applause).Optimism is often dismissed as false hope.But there is also false hopelessness.Thats the attitude that says we cant defeat poverty and disease.We absolutely can.MELINDA GATES: Bill called me that day after he visited the TB hospital and normal

26、ly if one of us is on an international trip, we will go through our agenda for the day and who we met and where we have been.But this call was different.Bill said to me, Melinda, I have been somewhere that I have never been before.And then he choked up and he couldnt go on.And he finally just said,

27、I will tell you more when I get home.And I knew what he was going through because when you see people with so little hope, it breaks your heart.But if you want to do the most, you have to go see the worst, and Ive had days like that too.About ten years ago, I traveled with a group of friends to Indi

28、a.And on last day I was there, I had a meeting with a group of prostitutes and I expected to talk to them about the risk of AIDS that they were facing, but what they wanted to talk to me about was stigma.Many of these women had been abandoned by their husbands.Thats why they even went into prostitut

29、ion.They wanted to be able to feed their children.They were so low in the eyes of society that they could be raped and robbed and beaten by anyone, even the police, and nobody cared.Talking to them about their lives was so moving to me, but what I remember most was how much they wanted to be touched

30、.They wanted to touch me and to be touched by them.It was if physical contact somehow proved their worth.And so before I left, we linked arms hand in hand and did a photo together.Later that same day, I spent some time in India in a home for the dying.I walked into a large hall and I saw rows and ro

31、ws of cot and every cot was attended to except for one, that was far off in the corner.And so I decided to go over there.The patient who was in this room was a woman in her 30s.And I remember her eyes.She had these huge, brown, sorrowful eyes.She was emaciated and on the verge of death.Her intestine

32、s were not holding anything and so the workers had they put a pan under her bed, and cut a hole in the bottom of the bed and everything in her was just pouring out into that pan.And I could tell that she had AIDS.Both in the way she looked and the fact that she was off in this corner alone.The stigma of AIDS is vicious, especially for women.And the punishment is abandonment.When I arrived at her cot,