During my final year at college, we were ushered into the server room one day to look at a desktop machine running a new operating system. An alien interface appeared in front of us, with windows, icons, a pointer, and a mouse to move it around the screen. It was Windows 3. For my generation, the story behind Bill Gates and Microsoft was the stuff of folklore - the story of a brilliant drop-out who (although a brilliant programmer) found himself in the right place at the right time.
As the years rolled past, the perception of Microsoft within the computer industry changed. IBM’s plucky rival slowly extended, and exterminated it’s way around the world, flattening competition in it’s wake. Bill became derided in the popular press as a megalomaniac, a monopolist, anti-competitive, and all manner of other derogatory terms. His name becamesynonymouswith the company he created - in many ways Microsoft’s many victories became the links of the chain the media heaped on his shoulders.
When he walked away, people wondered what a multi-billionaire would fill his days with for the rest of his life. Would he content himself with driving fast cars, venture funding startups, and perhaps buying the odd sports team as a hobby?What would you do if you had several billion dollars at your disposal ?
How about looking for problems in the world that governments aren’t willing to risk attempting to solve, and having a crack at them?I’m guessing your vague daydreaming about winning the lottery never listed finding cures for deadly diseases, or researching new teaching techniques for schools.
Bill was interviewed at the time he left Microsoft, and asked what on earth he was going to spend his money on. Nobody was really listening when he made an offhand comment about the privileged position he found himself in, and the scale of problem that interested him… something “big”, like “wiping out Malaria”.
That’s exactly what he’s doing though, and suddenly history is re-writing itself. The media are exercising their right to a fantastically short memory in order to change Bill Gates stars, and quite rightly so. It has been said that history is recorded by the victor - perhaps interestingly this time, the victor has been both the underdog, and the enemy.