Bill and Melissa Gates in their 2015 Annual Letter make a number of predictions about the future. These include:

1. The lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history;
2. Mobile banking will help the poor transform their lives;
3. Better software will revolutionize learning.

These predictions/bets are timely and interesting with the Millennium Development goals concluding at the end of 2015 with the post 2015 Development Goals expected to be adopted at the UN Special Summit on Sustainable Development in New York in September this year. The rapid growth of numbers with internet connection around the world opens opportunities for the impact of better software. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, estimates that there are roughly 2.9 billion people on the Internet with rapid advances in technologies and the role of partnerships such as Internet.org holding promise of significant reductions in those not on the Internet. The next 15 years should be interesting, including for our ideas on learning communities and networks.