In a lengthy interview with Wired's Steven Levy, Mark Zuckerberg responds to the criticism he's received for Internet.org, his global campaign to connect the world. After the announcement two weeks ago, Zuck came under heavy fire. Many believed the billionaire CEO would use this campaign as a way to boost Facebook users. "I think we can get to a model where a lot of those things are free for people who can’t afford them," Zuck tells Levy. "I'm talking about things like messages, Wikipedia, search engines, social networks, weather access, commodities prices. I call this the dial tone for the Internet."
An excerpt from the interview appears below.
Zuckerberg: The story of the next century is the transition from an industrial, resource-based economy, to a knowledge economy. An industrial economy is zero sum. If you own an oil field, I cannot go in that same oil field. But knowledge works differently. If you know something, then you can share that — and then the whole world gets richer. But until that happens, there’s a big disparity in wealth. The richest 500 million have way more money than the next 6 billion combined. You solve that by getting everyone online, and into the knowledge economy — by building out the global Internet.
[via Wired]
