Bill Gates Today
Bill
Gates has grown very powerful and sits at the center of world
technology. But the Microsoft Windows worldview is dead in the water, and
Microsoft has nothing to offer in its place. Windows is a relic of the ancient
days when e-mail didn't matter, when the Internet and the Web didn't matter,
when most computer users had only a relative handful of files to manage. Big
changes are in the works that will demote computers and their operating systems
to the status of TV sets. You can walk up to any TV and tune in CBS; you will be
able to walk up to any computer and tune in your own files, your electronic
life. The questions of the moment are, what will the screen look like? How will
the controls work? What exactly will they do? and Who will clean up?
Microsoft? Maybe. On the other hand, being the biggest, toughest doesn't help if
you're in the wrong place. Some people have the idea that Microsoft is fated to
dominate technology forever. They had this same idea about IBM, once admired and
feared nearly as much as Microsoft is today. They had essentially the same idea
about Japan's technology sector back in the 1980s and early '90s. It isn't quite
fair to compare Microsoft to a large country yet.