Bill Gates is, of course, the man who built Microsoft and a name cursed more roundly than Satan as the PC took off and people discovered Windows wasn’t perfect. But since the beginning of the new millennium, Gates has been working to essentially fix the world. As part of that, he held a Reddit AMA yesterday… with some fascinating answers.
First, an update on that infamous condom competition. Apparently Bill is still not satisfied:
The idea was that men don’t like the current design so perhaps something they would be more open to would allow for less HIV transmission. We still haven’t gotten the results. One grantee is using carbon nanotubes to reduce the thickness.
Yes, the same technology that makes car parts is going into boner protection. Aside from that, the questions largely focused on Gates’ philanthropic work, as you might expect. Gates’ goal for the next year is to somehow get the conversation about education focused on, you know, actually educating kids:
I wish the debate about education would focus on helping teachers improve and what we know about that. Right now it is caught up in state versus federal and testing versus no-testing. In general politics needs to focus on the problems rather than attacking the other side. Asian countries are helping their teachers improve and the impact is huge.
His greatest philanthropic failure? Not what you’d expect:
One thing that is tough is when you think the government will take over something you start but they don’t – we had that with a school lunch program. It might have been better if we hadn’t done it.
On lighter topics, when the idea of Samuel L. Jackson playing him in a biopic came up, Gates was characteristically humble:
Melinda would probably watch that version.
Also, apparently Brainstorm is one of his favorite movies. This is Brainstorm, if you haven’t heard of it.
The whole AMA is an fascinating read: Check it out here.
(Image courtesy of OnInnovation on Flickr.)