Religion, the new Science
Microsoft is in the news right now because of its sudden turn-around on gay rights, but what I find far more fascinating is the link between Bill Gates and the right-wing think tank, The Discovery Institute (with huge thanks to commenter michael reynolds at gilliard's place for the info):

Founded in 1991 by former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Seattle-based Institute has an operating budget of over $2 million. "Intelligent design" creationism has become such a central feature of the organization's work that it created a separate division, the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, to devote all of its time to that cause.

The Institute enthusiastically endorses what law professor and ID champion Philip Johnson calls the "wedge" strategy. (See "Insidious Design," page 8.) The plan is straightforward: use intelligent design as a wedge to undermine evolution with scientific-sounding arguments and thereby advance a conservative religious-political agenda.

Wingnut futurist and former owner of The American Spectator George Gilder also helped found the Institute, where he is a Senior Fellow and Program Advisor on "Technology and Democracy." Gilder has publicly stated that "[The United States] must eliminate all government programs, from coed job training to affirmative action, that fail to face the crucial differences between the sexes that make marriage possible." He also claimed that "[Poor women] are on welfare in the first place because they would not or could not get jobs that remotely compete with welfare benefits. On the whole, white or black, these women are slovenly, incompetent and sexually promiscuous." For a sampling of some of Gilder's other outrageous quotes, check here. Mr. Gilder would obviously be right at home in Gilead.

Gilder has also written widely on tech issues, and back in 1996 he had this to say about accusations of monopoly against Bill Gates' Microsoft: (page one), (page two), and (page three).

Blinded by the robber-baron image assigned in U.S. history courses to the heroic builders of American capitalism, many critics see Bill Gates as a menacing monopolist. They mistake for greed the gargantuan tenacity of Microsoft as it struggles to assure the compatibility of its standard with tens of thousands of applications and peripherals over generations of dynamically changing technology (avoiding the dialectical babel of the more open Unix, for example). They see the Internet as another arena likely to be dominated by Microsoft and a few giant media companies, increasing the wealth of Wall Street at the expense of the stultified masses of consumers and opening an ever-greater gap between the "information rich" and the "information poor." Focused on the summits of the industry -- CEO sŽances among media conglomerates and software kings -- all the critics can foster the impression that the Internet is a questionable, unpromising venue, vulnerable to monopoly and trash, thereby vindicating the Luddites and the Cassandras. [snip]

The Internet creates jobs by making workers more productive, and thus more employable, regardless of where they live. By engendering more investable wealth, it endows new work, providing the key remedy for the job displacement entailed by all human progress. By aggregating distant markets, the Internet enables more specialization, and more productivity and excellence. It will help all people, but most particularly the poor, who always comprise the largest untapped market for enterprise. And the Internet will continue to grow, transforming the global economy with its power and building a new industry even larger than the PC's. [snip]

In prophesying centralization and tyranny, the Cassandras miss the centrifugal forces of the Law of the Microcosm, overthrowing all monopolies, hierarchies, pyramids and power grids of established industrial society and endowing individuals with the power to be transcendent and free.

I would imagine Mr. Gates appreciated this Randian screed at the time, don't you think? (Many of Gilder's predictions would founder in the post-2000 tech meltdown. Interestingly, from what I can gather from Taibbi's hilarious review, Friedman appears to have borrowed heavily from Gilder's analysis in his recent book The World is Flat.) Anyway, Bill Gates has another connection to the Discovery Institute, via Mark Ryland, its Vice President. Ryland is a former director of Microsoft's Standards Strategy Group. He left the company in 2000.

Back in August of 2004, Lawrence M. Krauss, Chair of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, in a fascinating interview about string theory, parallel universes, dark energy, scientific illiteracy and a host of other issues, made the following observation:

I'm not against teaching faith-based ideas in religion classes; I'm just against teaching them as if they were science. And it disturbs me when someone like Bill Gates, whose philanthropy I otherwise admire, helps finance one of the major promoters of intelligent design by giving money to a largely conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. Yes, they got a recent grant from the Gates Foundation. It's true that the almost $10-million grant, which is the second they received from Gates, doesn't support intelligent design, but it does add credibility to a group whose goals and activities are, based on my experiences with them, intellectually suspect.

The interviewer went on to ask, "Why do you find this grant so particularly disturbing that you single it out here?" and Krauss continued:

Because we're living in a time when so many scientific questions are transformed into public relations campaigns--with truth going out the window in favor of sound bites and manufactured controversies. This is dangerous to science and society, because what we learn from observation and testing can't be subject to negotiation or spin, as so much in politics is. The creationists cut at the very credibility of science when they cast doubt on our methods. When they do that, they make it easier to distort scientific findings in controversial policy areas. We can see that happening right now with issues like stem cells, abortion, global warming and missile defense. When the testing of the proposed missile defense system showed it didn't work, the Pentagon's answer, more or less, went, "No more tests before we build it."

This scares me (what doesn't, these days, right?). Bill Gates has significant ties, and is giving considerable amounts of money, to a think tank--founded by a well-known misogynist--whose "real purpose is to undercut church-state separation and turn public schools into religious indoctrination centers." As far as I'm concerned, that's just as good a reason to boycott Microsoft as the company's decision to suddenly withdraw its support for legislation that would protect the gay community from discrimination.
- posted by TJ @ 11:19 PM