Bill Gates has committed his vision of the future to paper and it will appear in shops around the world today. Bruce Cohen takes a look at Gates’ roadmap to the information
LET me state my heresy upfront: I like Bill Gates. I think the founder and chairman of Microsoft is a pretty smart guy. I like the software Microsoft makes. I use it all the time and it works, most of the time.
This week I decided I like Bill Gates a little more. I think his new book, released today, The Road Ahead (Viking), is a pretty smart book. Inside is Gates’ vision: a sort of gift- wrapped, sunny techno-future tied up with shiny fibre optic
Gates is an optimist. He’s a believer in the information highway. Microsoft is spending $100-million a year over the next five years on it, because that, says Gates, is where the future
The Road Ahead is Gates’ attempt to cut through the hype surrounding the information highway and to place before us a roadmap of what lies ahead. Gates excels at writing simply, making complex technologies easy to understand. This is a user- friendly book that takes apart the jargon of cyberspace and makes it intelligible and interesting.
Here are some of Chairman Bill’s thoughts:
The future: The global information market will be huge and will combine all the various ways human goods, services, and ideas are exchanged … your workplace and your idea of what it means to be educated will be transformed, perhaps almost beyond recognition. Your sense of identity, of who you are, where you belong. In short, just about everything will be done differently.
Microsoft’s role: Through the magic of software, information appliances connected to the highway will appear to learn from your interactions and will make suggestions to you. I call this “softer software” … (it) will appear to get smarter as you use it. It could be that the software takes on the behaviour of a celebrity or a cartoon character … providing a social user interface. It will remember what you’re good at and what you’ve done in the past, and try to anticipate problems and offer
So what is the future? Eventually the Internet and other transitional technologies will be subsumed within the real information highway. The highway will combine the best qualities of both the telephone and cable (television) network systems. Like the telephone network it will be fully two-way so that rich forms of interaction are possible. Like the cable network, it will be high-capacity so there will be sufficient bandwidth to allow multiple televisions or personal computers in a single household to connect simultaneously to different video programmes or sources of information.
The digital glue: Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) delivers streams of information at very high speed – up to 155-million bits per second at first, later jumping to 622-million bits per second and eventually to two billion bits per second. This technology will make it possible to send video as easily as voice calls, and at very low cost.
The content revolution: … An encyclopaedia on the highway will be more than a specific reference work – it will be, like the library card catalogue, a doorway to all knowledge … the flexibility (of electronic documents) invites exploration and the exploration is rewarded with discovery.
Friction-free capitalism: The information highway will extend the electronic marketplace and make it the ultimate go-between, the universal middleman. Servers distributed worldwide will accept bids, resolve offers, control authentication and security and handle all other aspects of the marketplace, including the transfer of funds. This will carry us into a new world of low- friction, low-overhead capitalism, in which market information will be plentiful and transaction costs low. It will be a shopper’s heaven.
How heavenly? Computers will enable goods … to be both mass produced and custom made … Increasing numbers of products – from shoes to chairs, from newspapers and magazines to music albums – will be created on the spot to match the exact desires of a particular person.
The new ads: One way for the advertiser (on the information highway) to capture your attention will be to offer you a small amount of money – a nickel or a dollar, perhaps – if you will look at an ad. In effect, some of the billions of dollars now spent annually on media advertising … will instead be divided up among consumers who agree to watch or read ads sent directly to them as messages
Schools: The highway will bring together the best work of countless teachers and authors for everyone to share.
Different learning rates will be accommodated, because computers will be able to pay individual attention to independent learners. Children with learning disabilities will be particularly well served.
The highway will alter the focus of education from the institution to the individual. The ultimate goal will be changed from getting a diploma to enjoying life-long learning.
Bill’s new house: As you walk down a hallway, you might not notice the lights ahead of you gradually coming up to full brightness and the lights behind you fading. Music will move with you too … A movie or the news will be able to follow you around the house too.