hursday, 01 February 2007
Having your own phone number will become as "laughable and obsolete" as
the vinyl record, according to the software multi-billionaire who
intends to consign telephone exchanges to the scrap heap.
Expect instead to replace the humble phone call with internet-based voice, speech and data transfer. Your computer will recognises your voice instead of requiring its keyboard. And you will travel with a small "tablet" computer that recognises your hand-writing, while being able to access all your files from anywhere in the world. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was at Holyrood yesterday, setting out his vision of the technological future. He did so with customary geeky enthusiasm and salesmanship, in an Edinburgh double act with Gordon Brown. The Chancellor, however, admitted his narrower technical requirements meant his interest in the internet had been sparked by wanting to learn the Raith Rovers result while in the United States.
Even as Mr Gates prepares to step down from the chairmanship of the Seattle-based giant - to focus instead on spending his fortune on combating disease and poverty - his sales pitch remained focussed on the fast-moving horizons for information and communication.
continued...
Having this week launched his company's new Vista operating platform, he was setting the pace for the next breakthroughs he wants to go with it. Communicating with a computer by talking to it is a technology which is on track to become standard, and is already used in cars and by people who cannot use keyboards. The potential for video-conferencing has not been realised, he admitted, but watch this screen space.
He wants to create a system that will avoid having to back-up files. Instead, all your work would, at a fee, be backed up automatically in a very large memory - no doubt controlled by the Microsoft corporation. You would be able to tap into all those files on any computer and anywhere. Security of that information will be secured, he suggested, by moving on from password-based access. The jargon for this future is "user-centric".
The television revolution is already under way. Mr Gates foresees all TV programmes going on-line, watchable at any time, with potential for interactivity, while you edit out the bits that bore you.
But speaking to Microsoft's Government Leaders Forum, comprising 400 delegates meeting at the Scottish Parliament for two days, Mr Gates's main message was that the public sector's key role for the future of the economy and technology is to embrace an education revolution.
The best universities will no longer be where you go to hear the best lecturers, as Mr Gates did at Harvard in the 1970s. In future, they will be the ones providing the best on-line lectures and learning resources, accessible worldwide.
Microsoft is working with governments on the design of school buildings that respond to this change, and Britain is to be one of 12 nations to be part of a project for schools of innovation. Parents will be able to track a pupils' progress, assignments and schedules, each evening, while the Vista system offers parents the opportunity to track which websites children have visited and for how long.
But of course, what everyone wants to know about Bill Gates is how it feels to be worth at least £30bn. He quoted Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel baron and philanthropist, who said the person who dies rich dies disgraced. "I'm working on that, but it's a great responsibility," he said.
Whereas there is a direction and progress in running a business, he finds it frustrating when African governments undermine the impact of his education or health programmes. They are not as "numeric" in their approach, and "unlike a business, they don't get bankrupted".
"But I think there's an amazing amount in common between making money and giving it away in a smart way."
Expect instead to replace the humble phone call with internet-based voice, speech and data transfer. Your computer will recognises your voice instead of requiring its keyboard. And you will travel with a small "tablet" computer that recognises your hand-writing, while being able to access all your files from anywhere in the world. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was at Holyrood yesterday, setting out his vision of the technological future. He did so with customary geeky enthusiasm and salesmanship, in an Edinburgh double act with Gordon Brown. The Chancellor, however, admitted his narrower technical requirements meant his interest in the internet had been sparked by wanting to learn the Raith Rovers result while in the United States.
Even as Mr Gates prepares to step down from the chairmanship of the Seattle-based giant - to focus instead on spending his fortune on combating disease and poverty - his sales pitch remained focussed on the fast-moving horizons for information and communication.
continued...
Having this week launched his company's new Vista operating platform, he was setting the pace for the next breakthroughs he wants to go with it. Communicating with a computer by talking to it is a technology which is on track to become standard, and is already used in cars and by people who cannot use keyboards. The potential for video-conferencing has not been realised, he admitted, but watch this screen space.
He wants to create a system that will avoid having to back-up files. Instead, all your work would, at a fee, be backed up automatically in a very large memory - no doubt controlled by the Microsoft corporation. You would be able to tap into all those files on any computer and anywhere. Security of that information will be secured, he suggested, by moving on from password-based access. The jargon for this future is "user-centric".
The television revolution is already under way. Mr Gates foresees all TV programmes going on-line, watchable at any time, with potential for interactivity, while you edit out the bits that bore you.
But speaking to Microsoft's Government Leaders Forum, comprising 400 delegates meeting at the Scottish Parliament for two days, Mr Gates's main message was that the public sector's key role for the future of the economy and technology is to embrace an education revolution.
The best universities will no longer be where you go to hear the best lecturers, as Mr Gates did at Harvard in the 1970s. In future, they will be the ones providing the best on-line lectures and learning resources, accessible worldwide.
Microsoft is working with governments on the design of school buildings that respond to this change, and Britain is to be one of 12 nations to be part of a project for schools of innovation. Parents will be able to track a pupils' progress, assignments and schedules, each evening, while the Vista system offers parents the opportunity to track which websites children have visited and for how long.
But of course, what everyone wants to know about Bill Gates is how it feels to be worth at least £30bn. He quoted Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel baron and philanthropist, who said the person who dies rich dies disgraced. "I'm working on that, but it's a great responsibility," he said.
Whereas there is a direction and progress in running a business, he finds it frustrating when African governments undermine the impact of his education or health programmes. They are not as "numeric" in their approach, and "unlike a business, they don't get bankrupted".
"But I think there's an amazing amount in common between making money and giving it away in a smart way."
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