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20 Years of Bill Gates Predictions
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon May 21, 2007 09:06 AM
from the tell-me-a-story-oh-powerful-oracle dept.
from the tell-me-a-story-oh-powerful-oracle dept.
NewsCloud writes "The Seattle PI's Microsoft Blogger Todd Bishop asks "How does Gates shape up as a seer?" None strike me as particularly clairvoyant, but the missed ones are winners: "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." and "Two years from now, spam will be solved." But in fairness to Gates, for many years Microsoft's tagline was "a PC on every desktop and in every home.""
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I predict (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I predict (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What's the problem here? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What's the problem here? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What's the problem here? (Score:4, Insightful)
You still pay for it one way or the other. If it still costs you, it hasn't been solved.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
CEOs are not seers (Score:5, Insightful)
These sorts of comments can often be successful at moving the industry because people automatically equate wealth and power with wisdom. In this way, they take what is basically a marketing statement and turn it into some sort of prophecy. Gates was right on some of these because his own company took the industry in that direction. Where he was wrong, it was because his own company failed in its efforts in that area, or (in the case of OS/2 especially) they decided to go in a different direction.
On CEOs as seers. (Score:5, Interesting)
So no, I don't think Bill is a particularly insightful seer. He may be an evil genius or something when it comes to the minutiae of building an empire, but future-aspected he is most certainly not.
You want a seer? Try Jules Verne. Now that guy was pretty damn amazing.
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Re:On Jules Verne (Score:5, Informative)
You want a seer who was right? Try H G Wells.
Monsieur Verne suffered from a lack of vision. He just looked at current technology and 'expanded' it. He knew no physics, and didn't see the need to be accurate, so things like his 'From the Earth to the Moon' ignore the obvious acceleration problems of being shot out of a gun. Or the practicalities of being 'snatched' by an earth-grazing comet!
Much of his minor stuff is frankly incomprehensible - 'Master of the World' says that travelling at 200 mph makes you invisible, for instance. And he was so tied to the mid 1800s politics - Germans were alternately good (when they were in competition with the British) and then bad (after 1871!). Everyone was a stereotype.
Wells, however, had his physics dead to rights. He invented whole new genres of Sci-Fi - Time Travel, The Invisible Man, amazingly accurate social predictions in 'Anticipations' and 'The Shape of Things to Come'. When he did space travel he invented the 'warp drive' with his 'Cavorite' material which rejected gravity.
The 'War of the Worlds' invented the entire 'alien battle' genre that America loves so much. Did you know that his predictions of the 'Atomic Bomb' inspired Szilard to invent the 'chain reaction? Wells' description really was that close!
He did Bio-engineering with 'The Island of Dr Moreau'. Really there was no limit to his vision. But I presume I hardly need to list the rest - Slashdotters must all have copies of all of his books off Gutenburg. If they haven't, I don't think you can see any SF movie which doesn't relate back to his work in some way.
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Re:On Jules Verne (Score:4, Funny)
Have you ever seen me traveling at 200 mph? Perhaps it is because I WAS invisible...
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Re:On CEOs as seers. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:On CEOs as seers. (Score:4, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology [wikipedia.org]
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Re:CEOs are not seers (Score:5, Insightful)
Which relates to what you said in that Gates is trying to be the non-supernatural form of seer -- the one who tries to create the future with their prediction, instead of predicting some future that is destined to happen. Now, one of the common traits of literary oracles is that they are extremely wise and clever, such that truly distinguishing whether they can actually see the future or merely guide it meticulously is extremely difficult. They also tend to have unclear motivations, which also clouds the issue. This is what makes it interesting.
Gates' motivations are patently clear: Guide the direction of the industry in a way favorable to Microsoft. He also isn't supremely wise or clever. Though in the comparison I'm making he doesn't fit precisely because he's also the executor of whatever real path his company takes into the future. Somewhat like if it was Macbeth who predicted that he was to be king, hoping that saying so will help cause it to become true. Strangely that doesn't work as well.
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Re:CEOs are not seers (Score:5, Funny)
Awww, man, would it have killed you to put a "SPOILER" warning on that?
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Re:CEOs are not seers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention the infamous "deny-everything-until-we're-ready-to-launch" tactic. This comes both in the "dazzle the market" and "scramble to catch up" variety. Maybe there was some visionary insight in the boardroom or strategy sessions, but you didn't hear about it until they were ready to make money off it. CEO public statements are always about pushing you somewhere they need you to go or holding you back where they don't want you to go, also known as FUD.
Consider it a lot like the people playing the stock market. Some people want to talk the market up, some want to talk it down, some want to talking you into trading (brokers), others would rather scare you away (real estate) all depending on their position. None of them are into charity and free stock advice. Neither is the CEO of a public company out to give you free business predictions.
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Here's a better saying (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates would not look like such a stogy inept prognosticator if it were not for a few brighter lights and pioneers like Jobs and the Google boys. Even Michael Dell gets some credit for being a sort of henry ford at one time but that was sort of a one time flash.
Sure you can say Jobs did not invent Postscript or the WIMP interface or word processing in full-time graphic or music players or any number of things. But he was such an early and wholehearted adopter of nascent technologies that he is a pioneer. Pioneers did not invent the conastoga wagon or canoes they set forth in but they used them to blaze trails and set up the future.
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Re:Here's a better saying (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, I really like that analogy, and I'll extend it one step further: the people who actually invented those things were explorers, and some explorers come back rich and covered in glory, but most die miserable deaths a long way from home. The pioneers are a bridge between exploration and real settlement.
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Re:CEOs are not seers (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people would see such arguments as silly, and blatant advertising, but for some reason, management often sees people who are able to make a lot of money as founts of wisdom in all matters.
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Re:CEOs are not seers (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you dare questioning the way of the money! Money makes right! Ask any congressman next time he discusses matters with mafiaa representatives.
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MafIAA vs. The Mafia (Score:3, Informative)
The MafIAA is much more organized. This is partly because they haven't yet
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
About 640Ks worth? That should be sufficient!
Re:CEOs are not seers (Score:5, Insightful)
OS/2 was originally designed to be the successor to DOS back when Microsoft and IBM were working together. Microsoft and IBM then had a falling out and both companies went their own ways. IBM owned OS/2, so Microsoft pushed out Windows 3.0, which was not a DOS replacement, but a windowing system that ran on top of DOS 6.
Microsoft had to go back and develop Windows NT to replace DOS, and DOS did not actually go away until Windows XP ended the Windows 9x/ME line which were technically running on top of DOS.
IBM continued to develop OS/2 (remember OS/2 Warp), but while IBM may have owned the mainframe world, Microsoft owned the PC desktop. Windows won, and OS/2 was eventually retired.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Some Windows CE games were made; AFAIK only one of many games I own runs on CE (Armada). It's the least reliable game I own, and just removing and reinserting a controller can crash WinCE.
I believe the web browser also runs on WinCE.
OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Two points here. First, he was selling the product when he said this, and secondly he was actually right in the idea of it. It just happen to be Windows and not OS/2. Microsoft attacked the general market. IBM only knew about dealing with businesses. Once Microsoft moved away from OS/2 and went full bore on Windows, OS/2's days were numbered even though OS/2 had a lot of things going for it over Windows.
Re:OS/2 (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:OS/2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Amusing aside: my first experience with Steve Jobs' famous "reality distortion field" was a talk he gave at MIT in the early eighties around the time of the Fat Mac. I remember him saying something to the effect that "it turns out for networking all you need is about 150K/sec." He was trying to tell us that Appletalk was adequate and that ethernet was overkill. So powerful was the reality distortion field that nobody even called him on it!
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Re:OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:OS/2 (Score:4, Informative)
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Fairness to Bill Gates (Score:3, Funny)
Msft tagline ripped off from Apple? (Score:3, Informative)
Wasn't that Apple's idea? As I understand it, that's why they called the company "Apple" - it was supposed to be something every kid should have on his/her desk.
Re:Msft tagline ripped off from Apple? (Score:5, Informative)
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The Alternative (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Walken#A
Extra Extra.. read all about it! (Score:5, Insightful)
And in related news.... critics choose to focus only on the predictions that were wrong!
* Personally, I really loved OS/2. It's wasn't the best piece of software *ever*, but it was truely remarkable for it's time. I wish MS would have stol^h^h^h borrowed more ideas from it.
That's really not it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the article sucks, or Bill's holding his crystal ball close to the boardroom, but it's all pretty standard stuff.
Re-tooling words a little... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Methods to ensure proper copyrighted procedures (RIAA)
2) Methods to ensure proper filtering and re-programming the American Apple Pie way (MPAA)
3) Methods to ensure political correctedness (addenDumb to new DoJ/Christian Law "Thou shall not criticize thine government" doctrine)
4) Methods to ensure Osama is not in your living room and or you are not exporting crypto to him or his terrorist via any methods including telekinesis.
Missing Option (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, not that this is a poll, right? But you mention the RIAA and other organizations to which Microsoft caters and I wondered why the article doesn't mention "The MP3 is dead," which Bill Gates said back in 1998. That's far more interesting than several of the predictions they've listed, considering the current state of the iPod and the Zune.
Augur the Seer... (Score:3, Insightful)
At any rate, only a person with truly innovative and revolutionary approach has the insight to guess how technological advances will influence societies. Gates' approach has been to buy out companies he can't compete with, and then re-branding the acquired products. It was true with PC-DOS v1.0, and it continues to be true to this day.
Seer? Pah! (Score:3, Funny)
Gates Predicts He'll Make Another Billion (Score:4, Interesting)
And since making his kind of money means we all do it his way, his "predictions" are self-fulfilling prophecies.
How's that speech recognition and DB filesystem working out? Just fine, because the convincing promises sold several $billion more Windows installs on servers and desktops.
Bill Gates is the self-fulfillingest prophet ever, measured by the age old question "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"
OS2 prediction - OS2 became Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that a reporter missed this bit of history is typical. No sense of history or heritage.
Don't confuse the brand, owned by IBM, with the code, originated with Microsoft, that became Windows server.
Are OSS predictions any more accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
(1996-2007) is definitely the year of Linux on the desktop. (Apparently if you recite this one enough times it will become true)
XXXX product from MS is doomed to failure for no particularly logical reason despite the fact we really know nothing about it but we love unfounded speculation.
MS is on the verge of collapse because little bobbie just started a project in sourceforge and although it has not released anything yet it will be an XP/Exchange/Outlook/SQLServer etc etc etc killer when they do and so the MS Evil Empire will crumble.
Missed Queues (Score:3, Insightful)
He really missed this prediction in multiple ways.
For ticketing, the internet allows people to pre-purchase tickets for just about anything, allowing a very quick scan of a printed-at-home ticket for entrance.
For identification, RFID is revolutionizing that arena, and it does not require an actual computing device ("wallet PC") on the end user.
These "wallet PCs" turned out to be PDAs, and although latecomer Microsoft currently dominates this area with their mobile OS, the real revolutionary and cutting edge advances were made by other companies, like Palm.
The queues we see today are not because of the reasons he suggests, but due to the security required to prevent mass murder.
The ironic thing with his predictions is that his company actually has the resources to make a lot of them come true. I just wonder why other companies are the ones bringing us the gee-whiz technology and software. Internet search, iPhone's slick touch-based PDA interface, input devices like the Wii's. These are all arenas Microsoft compete in directly, yet others take the lead. Why can't MS make these kinds of things happen?
Dan East
OS/2 was a deception (Score:3, Interesting)
A goal, not a prediction. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a goal, not a prediction. A prediction requires that you have no ability to affect the outcome.
Let's see... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see what this has to do with news at all. Just another Microsoft rant this place has become so famous for.
NT IS NOT OS/2! (Score:3, Informative)
IBM made OS/2 a much better product after the split. If you ask for recommended versions, you'll get OS/2 1.3 for the command line version and post OS/2 2.0 for the graphical version.
Microsoft leaving OS/2 was the best thing that ever happened to OS/2 from a technical standpoint, but not from a marketing standpoint.
He missed the internet (Score:4, Insightful)
If Gates were really a great seer, he would have written the Internet Tidal Wave memo in 1990, not after the wave rolled onto the beach in 1996.
I am wondering why all this effort over the past year to pump up Gates' reputation? Has his illegal activities so ruined his reputation that there is an active effort in place to clean Gates' reputation for the history books?
Re: you must be a young-un (Score:4, Informative)
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