Now We Know

By Jerry Pournelle

June 19, 2006

(Now We Know :  Page 1 of 1 )

I noted earlier that Bill Gates didn't seem his usual enthusiastic self at WinHEC this year. His keynote speech was not just low key, but pretty flat. Now we know why. Gates is giving up his position as Chief Software Architect at Microsoft. He'll continue to be Chairman of the Board, but it's pretty clear his interests are moving beyond Microsoft to something else. It will be interesting to see where he goes now.

Bill Gates pretty well changed the world. When the Microcomputer Revolution began, the conventional wisdom was that small computers would be useful for many, but they wouldn't make any fundamental changes. The IBM vision of the future was perhaps 10,000 computers--the really far out visionaries thought there might one day be a hundred thousand; no one thought a million--all running software leased from IBM. There might be "entry level" personal computers which would serve to teach people how to work with real computers, and of course could serve for data entry, but they wouldn't affect the real computer world. Gates had a different vision. His was "a computer on every desk, and in every home." He thought these little machines would change every aspect of modern life, and it couldn't happen soon enough.

Without Gates the revolution would have happened, but it wouldn't have happened as fast. Now it's done, and there's no going back. It will be interesting to see what Gates will do next.

He has said that he doesn't want to be the richest man in the world, and he'll give away about 90 percent of his wealth. Everyone has suggestions for what he can do with that money, so it won't do any harm if I add mine.

First, the human race sorely needs Bell Labs again. I don't know how to do that. It won't be enough to set up a large foundation with a big endowment and set some bright people to work. That's been tried before, usually with indifferent results. The unique feature of Bell Labs was that activity there was focused, sort of, on communications and information. It wasn't all blue sky and dreaming.

 Page 1 of 1