| Please register to receive the benefits of our network-wide features. |
Register (free) |
Log In
|
| Please register to receive the benefits of our network-wide features. |
Register (free) |
Log In
|
In this inspirational presentation, Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, asks whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of humanity.
He cites mega-trends which lead one toward pessimism. World population is expected to grow from 6.5 to 9 billion during the lives of our grandchildren. Urban slums in developing nations are growing with declining agricultural productivity and quality of life in rural areas. Over 50 percent of the world population now lives in cities.Brilliant, a public health specialist, states that during the last thirty years thirty communicable diseases have jumped from wild animals to humans. He expects many more as we continue eroding the green belts separating us from animals.
Global warming is inevitable. If we were to stop carbon emissions today, we would experience a 20 to 30 inch rise in sea level. Brilliant anticipates that flooding due to rising seas and Himalayan melt will result in up to 100 million refugees leaving Bangladesh for India and China. He also notes that our new information and biological technologies have applications for evil as well as good.
These problems are compounded, practically and morally, by the fact that they will impact poor people disproportionately. Today a billion people live on less than a dollar a day -- will society be stable when that number grows to three billion? We see the beginning of instability in China, where last year there were 85,000 riots that required police or military intervention.
But there are also reasons to be optimistic. Brilliant feels the philanthropic activity of suddenly wealthy individuals like his employers at Google are a departure from the past. He is also encouraged by hundreds of innovative organizations like Doctors Without Borders and Grameen Bank and other micro lenders. He is also optimistic about the rapid growth of today's eclectic environmental movement, which he compares to the counter culture of the 1960s.
But the primary of his optimism is his experience in public health. Brilliant headed the World Health Organization program that eradicated smallpox in India. Smallpox, which killed half a billion people during the twentieth century, no longer exists, and we are close to eliminating polio and guinea worm -- that leaves Brilliant proud of our species and optimistic.
Dr. Larry Brilliant is the executive director of Google.org. In this role, he works with the company's co-founders to define the mission and strategic goals of Google's philanthropic efforts, and oversees the Google Foundation and Google Grants program.
Dr. Brilliant is an M.D. and M.P.H., board-certified in preventive medicine and public health. He is a founder and director of The Seva Foundation, which works in dozens of countries around the world, primarily to eliminate preventable and curable blindness. He also serves as a member of strategic advisory committees for the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health, Omidyar Network, and Kleiner Perkins (KPCB) Venture Capital. In addition to his medical career, he co-founded The Well, a pioneering virtual community, with Stewart Brand in 1985. He also holds a telecommunications technology patent and has served as CEO of two public companies and other venture-backed start-ups.
The author of two books and dozens of articles on infectious diseases, blindness, and international health policy, Dr. Brilliant has worked at city, county, state, federal, and international levels. He was recently a “first responder” for CDC's smallpox bio-terrorism response effort, volunteered in Sri Lanka for tsunami relief, and established “Pandefense,” an interdisciplinary consultancy to prepare for possible pandemic influenza. He lived in India working as a United Nations medical officer for more than a decade where he played a key role in the successful World Health Organization (WHO) smallpox eradication program and has recently worked for the WHO polio eradication effort as well. He was Associate Professor of epistemology, global health planning and economic development at the University of Michigan.
Brilliant earned a Masters in Public Health in health planning and economic development from the University of Michigan, and received his M.D. from Wayne Medical School. He has received several awards from the Government of India and from WHO. In 2005 he received an honorary Doctor of Sciences from Knox College, and was named “International Public Health Hero” by the University of California. In February 2006 he received the Sapling Foundation's TED Prize.
Resources:
This free podcast is from our Skoll World Forum series.
For The Conversations Network:
Play