Bill Gates is often called stealer of ideas, and accused of indulging in less than ethical business practices. He’s also infamous for his sometimes awry predictions- “640 K ought to be enough for everybody,” which to be honest was probably wrongly attributed for him. It’s probably all that money he’s surrounded by that causes jealousy and need for such rumors.
However, the latest prediction, some say, suggests that he’s retired just in time… Addressing a gathering of 1600 researchers, developers and academics in Hong Kong, Bill Gates shared his ‘vision’ about the future of the computer use. This was a seminar marking the tenth anniversary of Microsoft, at their Asian research wing.
He looked far into the future and discussed the various transformations that he expects in technology. He noted how the increasing connectivity to the internet will allow for more development of server-based technology. “People often talk about this as the internet service revolution, which will eventually lead to machines that have lots of server capacity, lots of low cost computing, low-cost storage and that will let us write software in an even more ambitious way, eliminating the last constraints we have.” Reading between the lines, it means that in the future, Microsoft hopes to catch up with Google and offer services in lines of Google apps.
His other gem was about touch screen appliances being everywhere, “because they’re fairly developed in the labs, I can say that in 10 years (they) will be widespread.” Yes, he did say “In ten years, they will be fairly widespread,” in case you thought you read wrong. In another interview, for BBC, he said “I’ll be brave, in five years we’ll have many tens of million of people sitting browsing their photos, browsing their music, organizing their lives using this type of touch interface.”
Err… Mr. Gates, it’s called an iPhone or an iPod Touch, and millions are already using such devices.
Some other Gates gems include “I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time.”
It’s sad really, because a lot of Linux fan boys and general Microsoft bashers now get to add more fuel to the already raging anti-Microsoft fire. On some forum a member seems to have the last laugh, “Hell, what do you expect from a person who never saw the end of the millennium coming.” This was in reference to the Y2K bug.
This article has been taken from Digit, September edition.
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