Are We There Yet?

The Road Ahead by Bill Gates (Viking 1995. 276 pgs. )

I know; I'm not supposed to beat up a book until I'm done reading it.

But who cares. It took me ten years to finally get around to reading this book, so I'd better get started reviewing it or who knows how long this will take.

A friend of mine said Gates completely missed the role of the internet. After listening to about a quarter of the book, I do sense that he seems to envision products that will appeal to some surreal customer of a utopian playland. This consumer will wake up each morning and ask "Where do I want to go today?" I wonder, however, if anyone besides Gates himself actually ever asks this question.

Nevertheless, Gates is not a bad storyteller, and he makes some keen observations about his success in the software industry. Gates predicts that the internet will be but a forerunner for the "information highway." This "highway" which he describes seems to be more like an advanced, on-demand television service than anything else. He predicts that "the highway" will evolve from the internet about ten years from the time he is writing (1995).

So was Gates just undergoing premature hyperventilation over TiVo?