Bill Gates
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Bill Gates has gone on record many times as saying that he does not plan to leave his children vast fortunes, and has even said that $10 million each seemed like more than enough. To most people that sounds like an enormous amount of money, but considering Gates’s $35 billion fortune, it could almost be considered paltry. The great bulk of his fortune, Gates insists, will be given away. There have been some critics who have suggested that he was not moving fast enough on the charitable front, but by early 1996, he had given more then $60 million to several universities, and established a $200 million foundation administered by his father. Several more significant gifts were made in 1997, topped by the $400 million gift to public libraries, particularly in the inner cities, for computers and computer software, with half the money coming from his personal fortune and half from Microsoft in the form of actual software. Gates has said that he intends to focus on running Microsoft for another ten years and then to turn his attention more and more to the process of giving his money away. While some of America’s great philanthropists of the past, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, seemed to turn to philanthropy in part to clear their names of charges that they had ruthlessly exploited their workers and gouged the public, Gates has for many years talked about the importance of giving back a great deal to the society that fostered his success. For all the accusations of monopolistic practices brought by competitors, Gates’s reputation has never been besmirched in the ways Rockefeller’s and Carnegie’s were. His mother’s many years of devotion to The United Way and other charities appear to have planted a philanthropic seed from the start.
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Warren [Buffett] and I share certain values. We both feel lucky that we were born into an era in which our skills have turned out to be so remunerative. Had we been born at a different time, our skills might not have had much value. Since we don’t plan on spending much of what we have accumulated, we can make sure our wealth benefits society. In a sense, we’re both working for charity. In any case, our heirs will get only a small portion of what we accumulate, because we both believe that passing on huge wealth to children isn’t in their or society’s interest. Warren likes to say that he wants to give his children enough money for them to do anything, but not enough for them to do nothing. I thought about this before I met Warren, and hearing him articulate it crystallized my feelings.
—BILL GATES, 1996
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Bill Gates the businessman is often feared and sometimes reviled, most often by other computer industry leaders whom he has bested, but Bill Gates the man seems determined to see to it that he is remembered not just as a computer genius, or the one-time richest man in the world, or even as one of the most important shapers of a new age of electronic information, but also as someone who helped make the world a better place. Only future generations can arrive at a final estimation of the ways in which Bill Gates changed the world for better or worse, but he is clearly aware that his legacy will be judged on the basis of the entire spectrum of his endeavors. Bill Gates admires other people who have a “wide bandwidth,” and he seems determined to live his life in a way that demonstrates that he has that quality also.
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I am offered countless opportunities to invest or make charitable contributions, gifts, or loans. Some people want a few hundred dollars, some a few hundred million…. Spending money intelligently is as difficult as earning it. Giving away money in meaningful ways will be a main preoccupation later in my life, assuming I still have a lot to give away.
—BILL GATES, 1995
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CHAPTER EIGHT
A VISION OF THE FUTURE
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Well, twenty years ago, when we started, we talked about a computer on every desk and in every home. Now, if you take that to its extreme and say one hundred percent of the people, clearly we’ll never get there. There’ll always be some people who choose not to participate, just like some people don’t use the phone or watch TV.
—BILL GATES responds to a question about people who don’t use
computers, 1995
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All companies, whether they make games, like Parker Brothers, or cereals, like General Mills, must think about the future, about new products and new ways of marketing them. But in the world of computer hardware and software, thinking about the future is the name of the game. That well-worn phrase “The future is now” isn’t good enough. Unless computer companies constantly press the boundaries of the possible, they will find themselves suddenly looking up to discover that “the future was yesterday,” because some other more innovative company has gotten ahead of them.
Bill Gates, as much as anyone else on the planet, has had his eye firmly fixed on the future since he was barely a teenager. It is precisely because he has always thought about not merely what comes next but what comes after “next” that his company dominates the software market around the world. But while technological development is his business, he has given far more thought to the implications—not only for businesses but also for individuals and for society as a whole—of the changes that new computer technology will bring. As he has noted, computers have changed the world more quickly than any other technology man has ever created. New technologies, from the repeating rifle to the steam engine, from the combustion engine to electricity, have always taken time to really take hold. The atomic bomb, because of its power to destroy the world, had a vast immediate effect on the way both individuals and nations thought about the world, but its power to destroy has kept it from being used, and its peaceful offshoot, atomic energy, has had a very mixed history. Because no other technology has developed so quickly—doubling yearly in capacity even as it came down in cost, according to Moore’s Law—computer technology, and particularly its manifestation in the PC revolution, has changed the way a greater number of people live more quickly than anything that has gone before.
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Computers will become truly intelligent someday—but I question whether this will happen in my lifetime. On the other hand, computers are on the verge of being able to talk, and when they do it will be easy to imagine that they are intelligent. Within a few years even small, affordable personal computers might have personalities and possibly idiosyncrasies. These machines will speak in a rather natural human voice, if that’s what we want…. giving computers the trappings of intelligence will make them easier to use. But it won’t mean they really think—yet.
—BILL GATES, 1995
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Computer development continues at such a fast pace that even someone as obsessed with its course as Bill Gates almost missed the importance of the Internet. However, because of the enormous resources of his company and his own ability to shift gears, he was able to succeed at playing catch-up in a way that many major computer companies failed to do. He is fully aware that next time he and Microsoft might not be so fortunate; the experience with the Internet has only redoubled his focus on the future. Over the past few years no one in the computer business, and even few of those academic or think-tank individuals known as “futurists,” have spoken out with more frequency and force about where we are headed. We live in a very complex time, in which technological and social change, each affecting the other both positively and negatively, occur with almost dizzying speed, and it is possible that even Bill Gates will miss seeing a crucial turn in the road (though not for lack of attention). His view of the future is both broad enough and complex enough to be of importance even if he does not have enough power to actually shape its course.
Gates has said innumerable times that he is an optimist and that he believes the future computers help create will be for the general betterment of humankind. But he is not blind to the dislocations that will occur. He has noted that no great change is ever completely for the best. By way of example, he points out that while the telephone made it possible for people to reach out and remain closer to people at a distance, it may also have led to a lessening of closeness with
in the neighborhood. And the “razzle-dazzle” of television, he admits, makes it more difficult for teachers to command the attention of students in school. But while computers may seem likely to accentuate both these problems, Gates holds out the hope that the rise of the Internet and the eventual creation of a true information highway, which is only in its early stages, may well succeed in countering—even reversing—these effects.
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Voting is an important example of an information activity that could be improved with the help of the Internet. Where I live, we vote for judges, but I often don’t know who deserves my ballot because little information about their judicial records is readily available. I look forward to an Internet-based alternative. Instead of voting in person or mailing in an absentee ballot, I expect to be able to vote from my PC.
—BILL GATES, 1996
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The ability of the Internet and the World Wide Web to transcend national boundaries, he believes, will promote a far greater understanding between the peoples of different cultures, and that understanding, as he sees it, cannot help but make for a more peaceful and less fractious world. This is an optimistic, even idealistic, view. There are those who would point to the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and the fragments of Yugoslavia and suggest that familiarity seems only to breed contempt. But Gates takes a larger view, suggesting that the nature of the World Wide Web can transcend what are in many cases localized enmities.
He does not believe, however, that the Internet will remain the wild and wooly entity that now exists. Gates treads a fine line on this issue. He notes that because the world has never before had a global medium that makes it possible for anyone to “publish” his or her views, it is sometimes difficult to determine who should be held accountable when material that some deem to be offensive is published on the World Wide Web. Gates recognizes that the issue of accountability is going to be difficult to settle, because different countries have a variety of views on what is libelous or offensive, and differing laws on matters of accountability. His views on the tricky nature of this problem have been borne out by actions taken in Germany, which has made neo-Nazi propaganda illegal on the Internet and takes the view that the companies acting as technological facilitators—say, Compuserve or America Online—are legally responsible for the content that is accessible through their services.
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Some people think the Internet should be wide open. They believe interactive networks are a world apart in which copyright, libel, pornography, and confidentiality laws do not apply. This is a naive dream, which fails to recognize that the Internet is going to be a vital part of mainstream life, not a lawless backwater.
At the other extreme, some people think the Internet should be tightly controlled. They would ruin the Internet in the name of reining it in.
—BILL GATES, 1996
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But while recognizing the importance of accountability, Gates is concerned about governments’ restricting what can be on the Internet to the extent that they undermine the free flow of information, which is its most important characteristic. In 1996, he took immediate steps to make clear his opposition to the Communications Decency Act, a part of the Telecommunications Reform Act passed by the U.S. Congress, because it made it a felony to publish on the Internet “detailed information about birth control, AIDS prevention and how to get a legal abortion.” In July of 1997, the Supreme Court made clear that it was on the side of Gates and other Internet advocates in striking down the Communications Decency Act as unconstitutional, firmly stating that the Internet could not be regulated in the way that television and radio are. This was the first major case in which the Supreme Court dealt with what promises to be a long string of laws on Internet communications over the next decade.
On the other hand, Gates does not believe that the Internet can be a wide-open medium in which any kind of material is available to anyone. He is concerned about the possibility of children stumbling onto pornographic material, of course, but he also notes that the Internet is now the repository of misinformation, outright lies, and disturbing propaganda that can also be dangerous to children and adults. He has had considerable personal experience with anonymous Internet users pretending to be him. These “impostors sometimes do incredibly nasty things, such as sending electronic mail in my name that promises people jobs or money or criticizes Apple Macintosh.” And although Gates has not brought it up, there are Web sites that can only be described as “Bill Gates hate forums.”
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Eventually I expect that anyone publishing information on a network will be expected to categorize it in an agreed upon way, to indicate its nature. The software used to access the Internet or commercial electronic communities will filter information based on how it is categorized. Software for use by children will reject adult-oriented content, for example. In order for self-categorization to be effective, the sources of information on a network must be authenticated so that people and companies can be held accountable for the information they distribute electronically.
—BILL GATES, 1995
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Gates thinks that the problems of offensive material on the Internet can be dealt with through a combination of technology and industry self-government without trying to make the Internet absurdly bland. He suggests that “authorized organizations” should develop a ratings system for Web pages, making it possible for software to block material that people do not want their children to have access to or that they themselves do not want to receive. Microsoft itself, as well as many other companies, began building ratings capabilities into software in 1996, and Internet services have been moving to provide parents with blocking agents.
While granting that no ratings system can attain perfection—people’s ideas of acceptability vary too widely for that—Gates believes that systems will be devised that will satisfy the great majority of people. He even thinks it will be feasible to keep a compartmentalized area of the Internet functioning in the anonymous chat room format that currently appeals to many users. Because that area would be compartmentalized, users would know that they were getting into a fairly anarchic situation; those who desired to do so could, while those who wanted to stay away from such free-form communication would know to avoid it or block it from children.
Although Bill Gates recognizes the necessity of dealing with these problems, understanding that many of them will be difficult to settle, he is obviously far happier touting the extraordinary benefits he is convinced the Internet can bring. While he may have been a little slow in recognizing the importance of the Internet, no one has subsequently been a more enthusiastic promoter of its potential. Gates has focused especially on the educational aspects of the Internet, and he is clearly certain that it not only can but will help provide greater educational opportunities to more people, both children and adults, than has ever before been possible.
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The most important use of information technology today is to improve education, and we have a tremendous opportunity to enhance the ways we think and learn by taking advantage of the computer as a learning tool. Microsoft envisions using technology to create a “Connected Learning Community,” in which all students have access to the world’s information through personal computers, and students, educators, parents, and the extended community are connected to each other.
—BILL GATES, 1996
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Gates has dealt with the issues of computers and education in numerous forums. He has devoted several of his newspaper columns to it, has answered questions about his views in many television and newspaper interviews, and has even appeared on a Nickelodeon news special with Linda Ellerbee, where he answered questions posed by a group of young children, some familiar with computers and some not. A chapter of The Road Ahead, called “Education: The Best Investment,” deals with the subject in detail. Not only has Gates done his homework on this complex issue but he also clearly has a genuine interest in it. His views
are far more substantial than the usual politically correct fluff one gets from business leaders trying to score brownie points to demonstrate their civic virtue.
Gates doesn’t try to dodge or cover over the problems that stand in the way of making electronic education work. He admits up front in The Road Ahead, for example, that so far educational technology has been “overhyped and has failed to deliver on its promises.” He is fully aware of the conservatism in the educational establishment that, combined with the anxieties of older teachers, creates resistance to new technologies. He recognizes the acute funding problems that beset education, particularly in urban and rural locales.
On the other side of the coin, Gates emphasizes the importance of good teachers and the need that children have for social interaction with other children and adults in a school setting. He points out that pilot programs using computer technology demonstrate that the students do best and are happiest when there is a teacher readily available to assist, answer questions, and encourage them. He sees the eventual development of an information highway that gives both students and teachers vastly increased access to information that can be used by both to give greater depth and meaning to education. Yes, students will get to interact with their computers, but that experience will serve as a basis for greater interaction between the individual teacher and student on a person-to-person basis. There are those who envision a future in which classrooms barely exist, students doing almost all their learning at home in front of a computer. Some believe this is what ought to happen; others hold up this vision as a warning against a dehumanization of the entire educational process. Bill Gates, on the contrary, sees the information highway and universal access to computer technology as a means of enriching an educational environment in which the interaction between student and teacher still plays a crucial role.