http://www.timesofisrael.com/bill-gates-likened-to-oskar-schindler/ Related Topics
Malcolm Gladwell
Bill Gates
Oskar Schindler
Steve who? That’s what Malcolm Gladwell says people will be asking in the future when someone mentions the late co-founder and CEO of Apple. Steve Jobs is not even dead a year, and the Canadian journalist and author of “The Tipping Point,” “Outliers” and “Blink” is already saying that the guy who urged us to think different will be lost to history.
On the other hand, Gladwell believes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will be remembered fondly. Actually, that would be putting it too mildly. According to PC Magazine, Gladwell, speaking at a recent engagement in Toronto, “likened Gates’ charitable work to the German armaments maker Oskar Schindler‘s famous efforts to save his Jewish workers from the gas chambers during World War II.”
Gladwell believes future generations will ultimately remember tech giants more for what they gave back to society than for what they achieved business-wise
Although the author did not use Jewish terms like tzedaka and pikuach nefesh, he clearly had charity, justice and the saving of lives in mind when making his off-the-cuff remarks about Gates, who stepped down a few years ago from his position as head of Microsoft to focus on his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gladwell believes future generations will ultimately remember tech giants more for what they gave back to society than for what they achieved business-wise.
“So Gates, sure, is the most ruthless capitalist. And then he decides, he wakes up one morning and he says, ‘Enough.’ And he steps down, he takes his money, takes it off the table… and I think, I firmly believe that 50 years from now, he will be remembered for his charitable work. No one will even remember what Microsoft is,” Gladwell told the Toronto audience. “…There will be statues of Gates across the Third World, and people will remember him as the man who… you know, there’s a reasonable shot, because of his money, we will cure malaria,” he went on.
Gladwell might just have a point. Oskar Schindler, considered a ruthless capitalist in his day, must have had to compile many lists — but the only one that mattered, and for which he is remembered — was the one that saved 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust.