Gates Sees Sharp Turns In Road Ahead Microsoft Founder’s New Book Offers Peek At High-Tech Future
A joining together of computers. An ultimate marketplace. A wallet PC with digital photos of your kids. An “e-book” to read at the beach.
It took two years and a painstaking rewrite to complete, but Bill Gates’ book-length vision of the techno-future finally went on sale this weekend.
With a $1 million marketing budget and a high-profile media tour by Gates to promote it, the book is expected to be one of the year’s hottest-selling non-fiction works. It’s holiday release was timed to put the book on gift lists across the nation.
“The Road Ahead,” Gates’ 286-page discussion of technology and the future, will sell for $29.95.
It was written largely by journalist Peter Rinearson, a former Seattle Times reporter. But Gates took a very active role, especially in the rewrite, said Jonathan Lazarus, Microsoft’s vice president of strategic relations.
In fact, Lazarus said, Gates’ close watch over the project is “the primary reason” it took a year longer than expected. Microsoft executive Nathan Myrhvold, a key leader of Microsoft’s advanced research, collaborated.
In recent weeks, bookstore clerks have been fielding questions about the book’s release from eager Gates-watchers. Suburban Seattle bookstores have posted Gates placards near their entrances, touting the book’s upcoming arrival.
Monday’s Newsweek magazine contains excerpts from the book and an interview with Gates. Another set of excerpts ran this weekend in the Sunday Times of London, and a third is scheduled to begin a week from Monday in The Seattle Times.
Paul Slovak, spokesman for Viking Books, which published “The Road Ahead,” said retailers have such high expectations for the book that they prompted Viking to bump its first printing from 500,000 to 800,000 - still about half the number printed for best-selling novelists John Grisham or Tom Clancy but more than most non-fiction.
“The booksellers have really gotten behind this book,” Slovak said. “I think they see it not only as a key book for the Christmas season but one of the most important non-fiction books to come out in the year.”
Gates is too busy to embark on a 25-city road tour like some authors, including Gen. Colin Powell, have done. But he spent two days in New York and Washington, D.C., interviewing with TV talk-show hosts and network news anchors, and speaking at the National Press Club and Smithsonian Institution. The first broadcast piece appeared on “Nightline” on Thanksgiving Day, followed by “Talking with David Frost” on PBS on Friday and the “Today” show Monday morning.
Gates also will promote the book in England on Saturday. The book was released Friday in England, Canada and Australia and will later be sold in 17 other countries.
So what’s all the fuss about? Gates, a Harvard dropout, has drawn a close following (fans and enemies alike) by building his computer software company from a two-boy start-up to a $6 billion market leader in the past 20 years. But are his 286 pages that fascinating?
The book is not intended to be a history of the company, and it isn’t an autobiography. It focuses on the future ways computers - or their next-generation replacements - will affect our lives.
Judging by the Newsweek excerpts, Gates spends much of his time talking about uses of technology that still seem like something out of “The Jetsons,” the futuristic cartoon of more than 20 years ago.
Some of the ideas are exciting, some seem silly or overenthusiastic (using a wallet-sized computer to record everything you say and hear) and others evoke fears of Big Brother watching our every move.
He says he shares concerns about the downside of technological progress - lost jobs, potential privacy abuses, information-age “have-nots” - but makes arguments in each case why those concerns can be overcome. And he discusses education, which he has said repeatedly is critical to society’s success. (Gates is donating the proceeds of his book sales to the National Foundation for Improvement in Education).
A few examples, taken from the Newsweek article:
“Now that computing is astoundingly inexpensive and computers inhabit every part of our lives, we stand at the brink of another revolution. This one will involve unprecedentedly inexpensive communication; all the computers will join together to communicate with us and for us.”
“In the United States, the connecting of all these computers has been compared to another massive project: the gridding of the country with interstate highways … A different metaphor that I think comes closer to describing a lot of the activities that will take place is that of the ultimate market. Markets from trading floors to malls are fundamental to human society, and I believe this new one will eventually be the world’s central department store. It will be where we social animals will sell, trade, invest, haggle, pick stuff up, argue, meet new people, and hang out.
“Ultimately, incremental improvements in computer and screen technology will give us a lightweight, universal electronic book, or “e-book,” which will approximate today’s paper book. Inside a case roughly the same size and weight as today’s hardcover or paperback book, you’ll have a display that can show high-resolution text, pictures, and video. You’ll be able to slip pages with your finger or use voice commands.”
“Record companies, or even individual recording artists, might choose to sell music a new way. You, the consumer, won’t need compact discs, tapes, or any other kinds of physical apparatus. The music will be stored as bits of information on a server on the highway. ‘Buying’ a song or album will really mean buying the right to access the appropriate bits.”
“When I prognosticate about the future changes in an industry, people often wonder if Microsoft plans to go into that field. Microsoft’s competence is in building great software products and the information services that go with them. We will not become a bank or a store.”