Billionaire Bill Gates has reviewed some of the world’s biggest problems, including the Covid-19 pandemic, to which he added forecasts for 2022, a year he believes there will be “reasons to be optimistic”.
The end of the acute phase of Covid-19
According to “elEconomista”, the Microsoft co-founder hopes that the end of the Covid-19 pandemic is finally in sight, believing that the “acute phase” of the pandemic will be behind us in 2022.
The pandemic has seen a significant increase in the frequency and volume of misinformation. Bill Gates acknowledges the problems and stresses that there is huge room for improvement in finding ways to combat misinformation.
“I underestimated how difficult it is to get people to get vaccinated and keep wearing masks,” he said in a blog post.
For the official, “there is no doubt that the Micron variant is of concern,” he says. “But here’s what we do know: The world is now better prepared to deal with potentially bad strains than at any other time in the pandemic.”
The future of working alongside the metaverse and robotics
The pandemic has changed the narrative around which companies that previously linked employee productivity to their presence in the workplace were spinning.
Structures that were once considered part of office culture are slowly losing their relevance and existence. For Gates, these changes will intensify further in the coming years, specifically in 2022, as people adopt new ways of working.
According to the billionaire, the future of work will be largely mixed. “I don’t see any reason why companies should make aggressive decisions right away,” he wrote.
Next, Bill Gates dives into the city’s hottest topic: the metaverse. Over the next 2-3 years, virtual meetings will transition from a 2D camera image grid format to a 3D space with a digital avatar, powered by Metaverse.
The idea is that, from now on, people will virtually find themselves in a virtual world with the help of avatars, which give the feeling of meeting in person, he points out.
Bill Gates revealed that Microsoft is already planning to start work on an initial vision from next year, which will use users’ webcams to animate the avatar used in the current 2D setup.
Digitization in education and health
Despite schools returning to face-to-face classrooms, Gates believes he will increase the use of digital tools to improve student learning.
The challenges associated with the gap in access to quality education have diminished since the onset of the pandemic and are expected to reduce further.
The curriculum and content will be more personalized and interactive, allowing students to focus on their areas of interest, says the person in charge.
The same applies to health care. Although telemedicine is ubiquitous, its use and importance has increased since the beginning of the epidemic. Technologies that facilitate telemedicine should continue to improve in the coming years.
Gates concludes, “Even after this pandemic is over, it’s clear that much of the digitization it caused is here to stay.”
