Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

The Entire D6 Interview With the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates (1 of 4)

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Unfortunately, due to issues too complicated to go into, we have to post all the D6 interviews in several 15-minute parts (I know, I know).

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety over the next weeks in this column.

Here’s Part 1 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates.

(I will be posting one video part of the discussion with Melinda Gates every day this week through Thursday.)

As you will see, Melinda Gates is articulate in ways that are critical to the task that she and her husband–that would be Microsoft (MSFT) Founder Bill Gates–have put before themselves: Big league philanthropy with deeply effective results, specifically in health and learning.

In this video, Melinda Gates talks about her early days as a Microsoft product manager, how to take technology to the developing world, the politics of vaccines and how the Gates Foundation can be a “catalytic” wedge.


D6 Conference

Conversations with the most influential figures in media and technology.
May 27-29, 2008
Carlsbad, California

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What’s happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we’re being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We’re being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard.

— Mark Pagel, fellow of the Royal Society and professor of evolutionary biology, in conversation with Edge.org