Why Bill Gates doesn’t fear Internet “balkanization”

Asked if fragmentation of the internet is something we should be worried about, former Microsoft chief Bill Gates said, “I think there’s a lot of forces that, when anything tries to separate off, bring it back together. Like in mobile phones, they tried to have their own way of doing things and that became part of one internet…. I’d say the forces of unification are stronger today -- you know, video journals, how you socialize -- and every device you pick up really is just connecting into the internet.” Gates also pointed to the one big example of semi-fragmentation that does exist, and noted that it hasn’t resulted in a breakdown of collaborative potential: “China is really the only one who to any meaningful degree has partitioned their stuff, but even there the scientific community is not separated in any way,” he said.