In an effort to make the information superhighway more comprehensible, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has produced a magnificently poor book whose mission and message are unfortunate roadside casualties.
"The Road Ahead" promises to be a vehicle for understanding how the emerging technologies of the digital age will transform every aspect of our lives. Readers imagine that computer whiz Gates will look into the same crystal ball that showed him the future of personal computing in the 1970s and predict the future of communications and the "information revolution."
Sadly, however, he has not applied his superior understanding of consumer trends, markets and communications to creating the guide for the very revolution that he himself catalyzed.
"The Road Ahead" is written to be comprehensible to 11-year olds. Gates remarks that he wanted to make the book as accessible as possible, so that anyone could learn about the "exciting changes" to come.
It is written in the tone of a patient college student explaining over long-distance to a parent (for the fourth or fifth time, at least) how to program the VCR. The tone is calm, the syntax overly simplified, and the unfamiliar terms are explained ad nauseam.
Such a critique at first sounds like technophile snobbery, but assuredly, it is not. The problem is that Gates writes endless sixth-grader sentences describing every conceivable mechanical detail in the evolution of Intel's 8008 microprocessor, the 8080 microprocessor and the Altair 8800 microcomputer.
"Why, what's wrong with that?" One might ask. Someone might even happen to be an aficionado of the 8000 microprocessor series. Why the fuss?
The problem is that no one but microcomputer technology buffs are interested in the minutiae of the mechanical evolution of personal computer microchips -- and yet this book is not for them.
Technology experts may never find more potent soporifics on the pharmaceuticals market in their lifetimes. Wading through simple-speak to read what for them would be a super-simplified and incomplete chronicle of tech-evolution must be terribly ungratifying.
For mainstream Americans who know far less about technology, the simple-speak which Gates adopts is a deceptive lure -- the promise of a readable guide for making sense of tomorrow's technology -- and ultimately offers disappointment for a reading audience stalled in the mind-numbing litany of transistor and microprocessor parts.
Regrettably, Gates is unclear on the identity and demographics of his audience. "The Road Ahead," technotes aside, is also terribly content-anemic. His chapter "The Content of Revolution" is stunningly lacking in both content and anything truly revolutionary.
"Implications for Business" provides nothing of substance to bank on, and "Paths to the Highway" provides guidance like the roadsigns in most Eastern European countries.
Some of the directions in which today's technology will take people in modern society are reasonably predictable -- the rest is speculation at best. Bill Gates has tried to capitalize on his name recognition as a leader in technology, but truly he has no crystal ball.
His book is filled with countless examples of colleagues who, by virtue of little more than luck, succeeded or failed miserably. If anything is an indication of the imperfection of Gates' business judgment, it is the poor conception of this book.
And if anything whatsoever makes this book readable, it is the rare handful of Gates' personal vignettes. One would be willing to wager his or her empire against Gates' (whether he or she actually owned one notwithstanding) that consumers would be far more interested in the man behind the machine -- i.e. Bill Gates himself.
Americans are always curious to know how billionaires have built their empires. Many would be amused for example, to hear how he engineered a computer program to schedule students in classes at his own high school, which mysteriously placed our young whiz in all-female classes.
At the very least, the public would probably like to know what technology has found its way into his own home and office.
Suffice it to say, the focus of "The Road Ahead" is blurry at best, the writing is poor and its target audience has an identity problem. Rather than achieve his mission of providing a road map to the information highway, America's foremost authority on personal computers and software has left his readers stalled en route to the information age at a critical crossroads.
