Our Common Humanity in the Information Age. Principles and Values for Development

Conclusion
Poor developing countries must open up their economies to the world economy (i.e., 
globalize), but to reap the full benefits of globalization poor countries must also introduce 
a “new economy” in the form of ICT. This offers great opportunities but requires 
substantial help from rich countries and a major overhaul of the world governance.
References
Bhagwati, Jagdish, In Defense of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 
2004).
Campano, Fred and Dominick Salvatore, Income Distribution (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 2006).
Salvatore, Dominick, Editor, “New Economy and Growth,” Special Issue, Journal of 
Policy Modeling, July 2003 (Contribution by: William Baumol, Martin Feldstein, Dale 
Jorgenson, Lawrence Klein, Dominick Salvatore, Joseph Stiglitz, and Larry Summers).
Salvatore, Dominick, Editor, “Globalization, Growth and Poverty,” Special Issue, 
Journal of Policy Modeling, June 2004 (with contribution of Robert Barro, William 
Baumol, Jagdish Bhawati, Lawrence Klein, Dani Rodrik, Kenneth Rogoff, Dominick 
Salvatore, and Joseph Stiglitz).
Stiglitz, Joseph, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York; Norton, 2002).
Stiglitz, Joseph, Making Globalization Work (New York: Norton, 2006).
Stiglitz, Joseph and Andrew Charlton, Fair Trade for All (Oxford University Press, 
2005).
Wolf, Martin, Why Globalization Works (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 2004).

---

132 | Our Common Humanity in the Information Age 
CENTRALITY OF THE UNITED NATIONS IN 
PARTNERSHIPS
Larry Brilliant, Executive Director, Google.org
When we talk about our common humanity, it is really a long way of saying “we are all 
in this together”. It is not just that we share 99.7% of the same genetic material; it is that 
we literally are in this together. Stories from the world of communicable diseases serve as 
an apt metaphor in this regard.
When there is a communicable disease for which there is not a vaccine and there is no 
anti-viral medicine that is effective, we are all in this together. When there is no cure, no 
amount of wealth can protect you from a pandemic that sweeps the world. You cannot 
put a sign in front of your house: “this is our response… leave it at the gate of the 
community”. Every race, every religion, every continent, every civilization, even the 
kings and queens, died from smallpox because we were all in this together.
A pandemic of H5N1 virus that spreads across the globe as all pandemic diseases do 
would not discriminate as to who is white, who is black, who is Jewish, who is Muslim or 
Christian or Buddhist or Hindu. Communicable diseases show us that they don’t respect 
racial divisions, they don ’t respect nation states, they don’t respect the things that we 
consider to make us different.
The moral behind the story is that we are all really in this together. And the UN is 
genuinely central to the great accomplishments and crises that we are going to have to 
face in the future.
We learn from the metaphor of communicable diseases that we are all in this together. 
We also learn why the UN is so important: because it was the United Nations through its 
specialized agency, the World Health Organization, which eradicated smallpox. There is 
no nation, no NGO that could have done it, only the United Nations could have 
eradicated smallpox, just as only the United Nations can successfully eradicate polio.
Public health is really at crossroads. For ten years after we eradicated smallpox, the best 
and the brightest did not go into law, they did not go into business, they went into global 
public health because they had seen the mountain that could be climbed by eradicating 
disease.

---

Chapter VII – Shared Responsibility and Partnerships | 133 
There are 2,000 cases of polio this year in the world. We can not fail the war against 
polio. So Google.org is supporting the UN Foundation by making a documentary about 
the impact of polio, and how good it will feel when we have eradicated it. We are trying 
to help people on the ground in India and in Nigeria with management support and 
technology support in order to eradicate polio.
We really believe that this is an important battlefield for the history of public health, and 
for the success of the United Nations.