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Bill Gates Talk From 1989 Surfaces

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hard-to-make-predictions-especially-about-the-future dept.

70sstar writes "A 1-1/2 hour recording of Bill Gates addressing a crowd of university students in 1989 was recently found and digitized, and has been circulating in some IRC channels for the past few weeks. The speech has found a permanent home on the web page of the University of Waterloo CS Club, where the talk is reported to have taken place. Gates covers the past, present, and future of computing as of 1989. While the former two might be of interest to tech historians, the real fascination is Gates's prediction of computing yet to come. Like the now-legendary '640k' remark, some of his comments are almost laughably off-target ('OS/2 is the way of the future!'). And yet, by and large, he had accurately, chillingly, prophesied an entire decade or two of software and hardware development. All in all, a fascinating talk from one of the most powerful speakers in CS and IT."

3 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Predict the future by imunfair · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What kind of business are you in?

    We predict the future. The best way to predict the future... is to invent it.

    -X-Files

  2. Re:Shh...poster was being smug! by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is funny to hear it straight from Gates though. He owes almost his entire fortune to IBM's failure to deliver on OS/2, and (to be fair) Microsoft's successful delivery of DOS+Windows (crap that it was).

  3. Imagine... by ReidMaynard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imagine you have the only Mercedes-Benz dealership, every morning customers are lined up, check-books ready. Year after year. You are rich beyond imagination.

    Then one day this fellow shows up with a Vespa and says, "You should sell these Vespa scooters too.."

    What do you do..?

    --
    -- www.globaltics.net

    Political discussion for a new world