And here it is. I hope it stimulates understanding, debate, and creative ideas about how we can take advantage of all that’s sure to be happening in the decade ahead.
1
A REVOLUTION BEGINS
I wrote my first software program when I was thirteen years old. It was for playing tic-tac-toe. The computer I was using was huge and cumbersome and slow and absolutely compelling.
Letting a bunch of teenagers loose on a computer was the idea of the Mothers’ Club at Lakeside, the private school I attended. The mothers decided that the proceeds from a rummage sale should be used to install a terminal and buy computer time for students. Letting students use a computer in the late 1960s was a pretty amazing choice at the time in Seattle—and one I’ll always be grateful for.
This computer terminal didn’t have a screen. To play, we typed in our moves on a typewriter-style keyboard and then sat around until the results came chug-chugging out of a loud printing device on paper. Then we’d rush over to take a look and see who’d won or decide our next move. A game of tic-tac-toe, which would take thirty seconds with a pencil and paper, might consume most of a lunch period. But who cared? There was just something neat about the machine.
I realized later part of the appeal was that here was an enormous, expensive, grown-up machine and we, the kids, could control it. We were too young to drive or to do any of the other fun-seeming adult activities, but we could give this big machine orders and it would always obey. Computers are great because when you’re working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It’s feedback you don’t get from many other things. That was the beginning of my fascination with software. The feedback from simple programs is particularly unambiguous. And to this day it still thrills me to know that if I can get the program right it will always work perfectly, every time, just the way I told it to.
As my friends and I gained confidence, we began to mess around with the computer, speeding things up when we could or making the games more difficult. A friend at Lakeside developed a program in BASIC that simulated the play of Monopoly. BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is, as its name suggests, a relatively easy-to-learn programming language we used to develop increasingly complex programs. He figured out how to make the computer play hundreds of games really fast. We fed it instructions to test out various methods of play. We wanted to discover what strategies won most. And—chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug—the computer told us.
Like all kids, we not only fooled around with our toys, we changed them. If you’ve ever watched a child with a cardboard carton and a box of crayons create a spaceship with cool control panels, or listened to their improvised rules, such as “Red cars can jump all others,” then you know that this impulse to make a toy do more is at the heart of innovative childhood play. It is also the essence of creativity.
Of course, in those days we were just goofing around, or so we thought. But the toy we had—well, it turned out to be some toy. A few of us at Lakeside refused to quit playing with it. In the minds of a lot of people at school we became linked with the computer, and it with us. I was asked by a teacher to help teach computer programming, and that seemed to be OK With everyone. But when I got the lead in the school play, Black Comedy, some students were heard muttering, “Why did they pick the computer guy?” That’s still the way I sometimes get identified.
It seems there was a whole generation of us, all over the world, who dragged that favorite toy with us into adulthood. In doing so, we caused a kind of revolution—peaceful, mainly—and now the computer has taken up residence in our offices and homes. Computers shrank in size and grew in power, as they dropped dramatically in price. And it all happened fairly quickly. Not as quickly as I once thought, but still pretty fast. Inexpensive computer chips now show up in engines, watches, antilock brakes, facsimile machines, elevators, gasoline pumps, cameras, thermostats, treadmills, vending machines, burglar alarms, and even talking greeting cards. School kids today are doing amazing things with personal computers that are no larger than textbooks but outperform the largest computers of a generation ago.
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. Interconnected globally, they will form a network, which is being called the information highway. A direct precursor is the present Internet, which is a group of computers joined and exchanging information using current technology.
The reach and use of the new network, its promise and perils, is the subject of this book.
Every aspect of what’s about to happen seems exciting. When I was nineteen I caught a look at the future, based my career on what I saw, and I turned out to have been right. But the Bill Gates of nineteen was in a very different position from the one I’m in now. In those days, not only did I have all the self-assurance of a smart teenager, but also nobody was watching me, and if I failed—so what? Today I’m much more in the position of the computer giants of the seventies, but I hope I’ve learned some lessons from them.
At one time I thought I might want to major in economics in college. I eventually changed my mind, but in a way my whole experience with the computer industry has been a series of economics lessons. I saw firsthand the effects of positive spirals and inflexible business models. I watched the way industry standards evolved. I witnessed the importance of compatibility in technology, of feedback, and of constant innovation. And I think we may be about to witness the realization of Adam Smith’s ideal market, at last.
But I’m not using those lessons just for theorizing about this future—I’m betting on it. Back when I was a teenager, I envisioned the impact that low-cost computers could have. “A computer on every desk and in every home” became Microsoft’s corporate mission, and we have worked to help make that possible. Now those computers are being connected to one another, and we’re building software—the instructions that tell the computer hardware what to do—that will help individuals get the benefits of this connected communication power. It is impossible to predict exactly what it will be like to use the network. We’ll communicate with it through a variety of devices, including some that look like television sets, some like today’s PCs; some will look like telephones, and some will be the size and something like the shape of a wallet. And at the heart of each will be a powerful computer, invisibly connected to millions of others.
There will be a day, not far distant, when you will be able to conduct business, study, explore the world and its cultures, call up any great entertainment, make friends, attend neighborhood markets, and show pictures to distant relatives—without leaving your desk or armchair. You won’t leave your network connection behind at the office or in the classroom. It will be more than an object you carry or an appliance you purchase. It will be your passport into a new, mediated way of life.
Firsthand experiences and pleasures are personal and unmediated. No one, in the name of progress, will take away from you the experience of lying on a beach, walking in the woods, sitting in a comedy club, or shopping at a flea market. But firsthand experiences aren’t always rewarding. For example, waiting in line is a firsthand experience, but we have been trying to invent ways to avoid it ever since we first queued up.