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Prescient

Entry 538, on 2007-05-22 at 16:50:32 (Rating 3, Computers)

Slashdot reported on a story today which listed the tech predictions of Bill Gates. Its not particularly valid to choose a series of predictions based on uncertain criteria and then comment on their accuracy. Also, we don't know how accurate an average "non-tech savvy" person might be purely based on common sense. And we don't know how many predictions might be accurate based purely on chance. Of course, I will now ignore all of these problems and criticise Gates anyway!

In 1997 he predicted that "Within 10 years the majority of all adults will be using electronic mail and living a form of that Web lifestyle." Email has certainly become a major form of communications even to people who use computers for very little else. What "living a form of web lifestyle" means I'm not sure, but certainly many people use the Internet as part of their everyday life through social networking, video sharing, etc.

Of course, anyone (including myself) who was an early adopter of Internet technology (I had an email address in the late 80s and a web site in early 90s) would have predicted this, not necessarily because of a great deal of prescience but more because of pure enthusiasm for the technology. So Bill got this one right, but it was hardly a startling prediction so he only gets half points.

There were many other predictions he got right, but they all seemed to be related to the Internet, and none of them were pioneered by Microsoft. If he was so sure that TV content would be delivered on the 'net why has everyone else got so far ahead? Again, he was right, but there's nothing that impressive about that.

What about some of the less successful predictions? In 2004 he said that "two years from now, spam will be solved." Well its now three years and it hasn't been solved yet, although there are some signs it might be diminishing. However, we would have to give him a fail on that one.

In 1987 he wrote "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." That was in an OS/2 programming guide so it would be expected it might be unrealistically positive, and it was. OS/2 was a very advanced system at the time, maybe too advanced. Like many products away ahead of their time it failed. Apple have also been a victim of this phenomenon, but not Microsoft. Maybe Gates should have known better.

At Comdex in 2001 he said "So next year a lot of people in the audience, I hope, will be taking their notes with those Tablet PCs." This hasn't really happened. In fact tablet PCs haven't been a great success at all. Maybe this is because Apple haven't made one so Microsoft have never had anything successful to copy. I think he would score a zero on that one, too.

So what about predictions for the future? Here's a few... Newspapers and magazines will go on line. Given that foldable electronic paper is just around the corner and every major news source is already on-line, I would say that is obvious. IP TV will replace broadcast TV. Again, there aren't many experts who would disagree on that one. The yellow pages will be less and less useful. I'm sure no one would argue with that one either. And finally: the computer will be the center of communications. Sheesh, the man's a genius. Talk about stating the obvious.

No wonder Microsoft never do anything truly revolutionary and choose to copy and assimilate instead (of course, from a financial perspective that has worked well for them). My conclusion has got to be that Gates is the personification of mediocrity. These timid and obvious predictions make that point well, I think.

Comment 1 (3498) by Rick Harvey on 2013-04-13 at 11:32:49:

640k is more RAM than anyone will ever need. - Bill Gates, 1981

Comment 2 (3499) by OJB on 2013-04-13 at 19:53:32:

I deliberately didn't include this one because he denies saying it, and there is no good evidence he ever did according to most sources. But it was a limit in early versions of Microsoft's operating systems so it seems the sort of thing he might have said to defend his products.

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