Consider the following statements, made by the same man eight years apart. "Eventually, being ’poor’ won’t be as much a matter of living in a poor country as it will be a matter of having poor skills." That was Bill Gates talking in 1992. Way back then, the Microsoft chairman’s image was that of a rather harsh, libertarian-leaning fellow who proudly declared his products alone would "change the world." When asked what he would do with his billions, the boy wonder of Silicon Valley used to shrug off the question, saying his long workdays didn’t leave time for charity. But now listen to the same Gates—or perhaps not quite the same Gates—talking in the fall of 2000: "Whenever the computer industry has a panel about the digital divide and I’m on the panel, I always think, ’OK, you want to send computers to Africa, what about food and electricity— those computers aren’t going to be that valuable... The mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and say: ’My children are dying, what can you do?’"

　　Yes, even Bill Gates, the iconic capitalist of our day, seems to have come around. The self-assured Gates of 1992 was obviously a man of his times, confident of his industry’s ability to change the world, certain that the power of markets and new technology, once unleashed, would address most of the world’s ills. But the more skeptical Gates of the new millennium is someone who evinces a passion for giving and government aid. He shares a growing realization, even in the multibillionaire set, that something is amiss with the ideology that has prevailed since the end of the cold war: global-capitalism-as-panacea.

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　　看看下面由同一个人在八年前说过的话：“归根结底，贫穷不是生活在穷国的问题，而是缺乏技术的问题。”这是比尔•盖茨1992年的说法。想当年，这位微软公司的总裁给人的印象总是言词尖锐，口无遮拦，踌躇满志，宣称自己的产品足以改变整个世界。

　　的确，连盖茨这个当代备受推崇的资本家也开始清醒过来。1992年的盖茨充满自信，显然是那个时代的风云人物，完全相信软件业有能力改变整个世界，确信市场和新兴科技的力量，一旦得以释放，必将消除世界上大部分的顽疾。然而新千年的盖茨对此表示出了怀疑，对于捐助和政府资助却表现出极大的热情。冷战结束后盛行的观念是全球资本主义是解决一切问题的良方，而身为亿万富翁的盖茨也逐渐意识到这种想法有失偏颇。