20 Years of Bill Gates Predictions

NewsCloud writes "The Seattle PI's Microsoft Blogger Todd Bishop asks "How does Gates shape up as a seer?" None strike me as particularly clairvoyant, but the missed ones are winners: "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." and "Two years from now, spam will be solved." But in fairness to Gates, for many years Microsoft's tagline was "a PC on every desktop and in every home.""

Comments

Re:CEOs are not seers

[Chris Burke]

One common theme in literature is the question of whether oracles predict the future, or create it. Would Oedipus have killed his father had the Oracle at Delphi never prophecied that he would and thus his father never sent him to die in the wilderness? Had the witches not said that Macbeth would not be harmed by any of woman born, would he have gone down the path that led to him being killed by the C-section-birthed Macduff?

Which relates to what you said in that Gates is trying to be the non-supernatural form of seer -- the one who tries to create the future with their prediction, instead of predicting some future that is destined to happen. Now, one of the common traits of literary oracles is that they are extremely wise and clever, such that truly distinguishing whether they can actually see the future or merely guide it meticulously is extremely difficult. They also tend to have unclear motivations, which also clouds the issue. This is what makes it interesting.

Gates' motivations are patently clear: Guide the direction of the industry in a way favorable to Microsoft. He also isn't supremely wise or clever. Though in the comparison I'm making he doesn't fit precisely because he's also the executor of whatever real path his company takes into the future. Somewhat like if it was Macbeth who predicted that he was to be king, hoping that saying so will help cause it to become true. Strangely that doesn't work as well.