Bill Gates Predicts an “Energy Miracle” That Will Change the World

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has predicted that an “energy miracle” is coming, and that it will change the world forever. Gates, in the 2016 draft of the letter he and his wife write every year, explains that, by “miracle,” he means “The personal computer. The Internet. The polio vaccine. None of them happened by chance. They are the result of research and development and the human capacity to innovate.”

In a subsequent interview with Tech Insider, Gates clarified his comments further, saying, “When I say “miracle” I mean a kind of thing like a computer on a chip, or the internet, or the cellphone, that are really quite miraculous. Most people would not have predicted them, and their effect has been very, very dramatic. In medicine, we’ve had a lot of miracles, and I think all of us expect and count on more.”

“In the next 30 years, I really do think cancer will largely be a solved problem. I think most of the infectious diseases like malaria — our foundation is very involved — once we’re finishing polio eradication, then starting up this malaria eradication, and getting that done as fast as we can,” he added.

Gates believes that persuading the ruling classes to initiate this change is vital. “Governments have a big role to play in sparking new advances, as they have for other scientific research,” he writes. “U.S. government funding was behind breakthrough cancer treatments and the moon landing. If you’re reading this online, you have the government to thank for that too. Research paid for by the U.S. government helped create the Internet.”