Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
Bill Gates is an American business entrepreneur, investor, author, and philanthropist who was born on October 28, 1955. Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft in 1975, and it quickly grew to become the world's largest PC software company. Gates served as chairman, CEO, and chief software architect at Microsoft during his tenure, and was the company's largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has written and co-authored a number of books. Gates has been on Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest individuals since 1987, and was the wealthiest from 1995 to 2007, then again in 2009, and since 2014. His fortune more than doubled between 2009 and 2014, rising from US$40 billion to more than US$82 billion. His net worth climbed by $15 billion between 2013 and 2014. With an estimated net worth of $81.7 billion as of October 2016, Bill Gates is the wealthiest person on the planet. One of the most well-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution is Bill Gates. Gates has been chastised for his anti-competitive business practices, which have been validated in some situations by many court judgments. Later in his career, Gates became involved in philanthropy, donating huge sums of money to a variety of charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he founded in 2000. In January 2000, Bill Gates resigned as Microsoft's chief executive officer. He kept his position as chairman and created a new role for himself as a chief software architect. Gates said in June 2006 that he would be shifting from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ray Ozzie (chief software architect) and Craig Mundie gradually took up their responsibilities (chief research and strategy officer). Ozzie eventually quit the firm. The 27th of June, 2008, was Bill Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft. In February 2014, he stepped down as chairman of Microsoft, taking on a new role as a technology consultant to assist newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
Early years
On October 28, 1955, Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington. William H. Gates, Sr., and Mary Maxwell Gates are his parents. Gates' ancestors are of English, German, Irish, and Scots-Irish descent. His father was a well-known lawyer, and his mother was a member of the First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way boards of directors. JW Maxwell, a major bank president, was Gates' maternal grandfather. Gates has a younger sister, Libby, and an older sister, Kristi (Kristianne). He was the fourth Gates in his family, but because his father had the "II" suffix, he was known as William Gates III or "Trey." Gates' parents envisioned him as a lawyer from an early age. Gates' family used to go to a Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination, on a regular basis when he was a child. "It didn't matter if it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the pier," one visitor said, "there was always a reward for winning and a penalty for losing." He joined the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school when he was 13 years old. The Mothers Club at Lakeside School utilized money from a rummage sale when he was in eighth grade to purchase a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's kids. In order to pursue his passion for programming the GE system in BASIC, Gates was exempted from math studies. On this system, he created his first computer program: a tic-tac-toe implementation that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was enthralled by the machine's ability to flawlessly execute software code. "There was just something wonderful about the machine," he stated as he thought on the experience. He and other students sought time on systems such as DEC PDP minicomputers after the Mothers Club grant ran out. One of these systems was a PDP-10 owned by Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which barred four Lakeside students – Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans – from using it for the summer after it was discovered that they were abusing bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time. In compensation for computer time, the four students pledged to uncover vulnerabilities in CCC's software after the end of the ban. Rather than using Teletype to access the system, Gates visited CCC's offices and studied source code for several applications that operated on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine language programmes. The agreement with CCC lasted until the company went out of operation in 1970. The four Lakeside students were hired the next year by Information Sciences, Inc. to create a payroll application in Cobol, in exchange for computer time and royalties. Gates created the school's computer programme to arrange pupils in classes after his administrators learned of his programming ability. He changed the code to put him in classes with "an unusually large number of interesting girls."
"It was difficult to draw myself away from a machine where I could so obviously demonstrate accomplishment," he subsequently said. At the age of 17, Gates and Allen created Traf-O-Data, a company that made traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. Bill Gates worked as a congressional page in the United States House of Representatives in early 1973. Gates was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. In the fall of 1973, he entered at Harvard College after receiving an SAT score of 1590 out of 1600. He met Steve Ballmer, who would later follow Gates as CEO of Microsoft, while at Harvard. In his second year, Gates created a pancake sorting algorithm as a solution to one of a series of unsolvable problems presented by one of his teachers, Harry Lewis, in a combinatorics lecture. For over thirty years, Gates' solution retained the record for being the quickest; its successor is barely 1% quicker. In partnership with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou, he formalized his solution in a published work. While at Harvard, Gates did not have a set study schedule and spent a lot of time on the school's computers. Gates kept in touch with Paul Allen, and in the summer of 1974, he joined him at Honeywell. The MITS Altair 8800, based on the Intel 8080 CPU, was released the next year, and Gates and Allen saw this as an opportunity to create their own computer software company. At this time, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. After realizing how much Gates wanted to start a company, he talked it over with his parents, who were supportive of his idea.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
Microsoft
BASIC
Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the designers of the new microcomputer, after reading a demonstration of the Altair 8800 in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. He informed them that he and his colleagues were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In actuality, Gates and Allen didn't have an Altair and hadn't developed any code for it; they just wanted to see if MITS was interested. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet with them for a demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks, they created an Altair emulator for a minicomputer, as well as a BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, which took place at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, went well, and MITS agreed to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. MITS hired Paul Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard in November 1975 to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque. Its partnership was called "Micro-Soft," and its first office was in Albuquerque. The hyphen was eliminated after a year, and the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976. Gates never went back to Harvard to get his degree. Computer hobbyists loved Microsoft's Altair BASIC, but Gates learned that a pre-release copy had escaped into the community and was being widely copied and disseminated.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
In February 1976, Gates published an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter, claiming that more than 90% of Microsoft Altair BASIC users had not paid Microsoft for it, and that as a result, the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of removing any professional developers' incentive to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. Many computer hobbyists were outraged by this letter, but Gates stood firm in his opinion that software creators should be free to demand payment. In late 1976, Microsoft broke away from MITS and continued to create programming language software for a variety of systems. On January 1, 1979, the corporation relocated from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington. During the early years of Microsoft, every employee had broad responsibility for the company's operations. Gates was in charge of the business details while continuing to produce code. Gates personally evaluated every piece of code the business released for the first five years, rewriting parts of it as he saw fit.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
IBM's collaboration
In July 1980, IBM approached Microsoft about its new personal computer, the IBM PC. Microsoft was first offered by the computer business to build the BASIC interpreter. When IBM's representatives expressed a need for an operating system, Gates directed them to Digital Research (DRI), the company that created the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's talks with Digital Research did not go well, and they were unable to strike a licensing agreement. During the following discussion with Gates, IBM representative Jack Sams brought up the licensing issues and advised him to find a suitable operating system. A few weeks later, Gates advocated utilizing 86-DOS (QDOS), a CP/M-like operating system created by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for PC-like hardware. Microsoft signed an agreement with SCP to become the sole licensing agency for 86-DOS, and subsequently the full owner. Microsoft supplied the operating system to IBM as PC DOS after customizing it for the PC for a one-time price of $50,000. Because he thought that other hardware makers would clone IBM's technology, Gates did not agree to relinquish the copyright on the operating system. They succeeded, and Microsoft became a dominant player in the industry as a result of MS-DOS sales. Despite IBM's name on the operating system, Microsoft's influence on the new computer was swiftly noticed by the press. "Is Gates the guy behind the machine?" PC Magazine wondered, and InfoWorld reported an analyst as saying, "It's Gates' computer." On June 25, 1981, Gates oversaw Microsoft's reorganization, which re-incorporated the firm in Washington state and made Gates the company's president and board chairman.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
Windows
On November 20, 1985, Microsoft released the first retail version of Microsoft Windows, and in August, the company announced a partnership with IBM to develop OS/2, a new operating system. Despite the fact that the two companies successfully produced the first version of the new system, the cooperation began to erode due to growing creative differences.
Style of management
Gates was in charge of Microsoft's product strategy from the company's inception in 1975 until 2006. He aggressively expanded Microsoft's product line, and he actively guarded Microsoft's dominant position everywhere it existed. He developed a reputation for being remote from others; in 1981, an industry executive publicly stated, "Gates is renowned for not being approachable by phone and for not returning phone calls." After showing Gates a game and defeating him 35 of 37 times, another executive recalled that when they met again a month later, Gates won "Every game was won or tied. He had studied the game till he had figured out how to win. That is a rivalry." Gates met with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers on a regular basis as an executive. According to eyewitness descriptions of these sessions, he was confrontational verbally, berating management for perceived flaws in their business ideas or suggestions that jeopardized the company's long-term interests. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" he said during presentations. The subject of his fury then had to justify the proposition in great detail until Gates was persuaded, hopefully. He was known to cynically say, "I'll do it over the weekend," when subordinates appeared to be stalling. In Microsoft's early years, Gates worked as a software developer, particularly on the company's programming language products, although he spent the majority of his time as a management and executive. Gates hasn't been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code for the company's products as late as 1989. Jerry Pournelle said in 1985 that while seeing Bill Gates announce Microsoft Excel, he was fascinated by the technical aspects "Something else made an impression on me. Bill Gates likes the program because it's a clever hack, not because it'll make him a lot of money (though I'm sure it will)." Gates said on June 15, 2006, that he would step down from his day-to-day position over the next two years to devote more time to philanthropy. Ray Ozzie was in charge of day-to-day management, while Craig Mundie was in charge of long-term product strategy, as he divided his responsibilities between two successors.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife
Litigation involving antitrust
Gates approved many of the actions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices. Gates offered evasive deposition testimony in the United States v. Microsoft case in 1998, according to various journalists. He disputed with examiner David Boies about the meaning of words like "compete," "concerned," and "we" in context. Several times during the deposition, the judge and other courtroom observers were spotted giggling. Early rounds of his deposition show him giving obfuscatory responses and stating "I don't recall" so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle, according to BusinessWeek. Worse, prosecutors openly challenged many of Gates' denials and admissions of ignorance using snippets of e-mail that he both sent and received. Gates later explained that he had merely opposed Boies' attempts to misrepresent his words and actions. He described his demeanor during the deposition as follows: "Is it true that I fought with Boies?... I admit it. Whatever the penalty is, it should be applied to me: first-degree rudeness to Boies." Despite Gates's denials, the judge found Microsoft guilty of monopolization, tying, and obstructing competition, all of which are illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Advertisement appearance
In 2008, Bill Gates appeared in a series of advertisements for Microsoft. The first commercial, which co-stars Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second conversation between strangers as Seinfeld approaches a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and finds Gates buying shoes inside. Mr. Gates' shoes are a size too big, and the salesperson is trying to sell them to him. While purchasing the shoes, Gates displays his discount card, which features a slightly altered version of his own mugshot from his 1977 arrest for a traffic offense in New Mexico. Seinfeld asks Gates if he has fused his mind with other developers as they walk out of the mall, and gets a "Yes." He then asks if they are working on a means to make computers edible, and gets another "Yes." Some speculate that this is a nod to Seinfeld's own "nothing" show (Seinfeld). In the second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld visit the home of a typical family attempting to blend in. Post-Microsoft Gates has continued his charity and worked on other initiatives since leaving Microsoft's day-to-day operations. Gates was the world's highest-earning billionaire in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as his fortune climbed from US$15.8 billion to US$78.5 billion. The majority of Gates' assets are held in Cascade Investment LLC, an organization through which he has stakes in a number of companies, including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Corbis Corp. as of January 2014. Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft on February 4, 2014, to join Satya Nadella as a Technology Advisor. Gates shared his views on a variety of problems, including climate change, his charity activities, numerous tech businesses and people involved in them, and the status of America, in a lengthy interview with Rolling Stone magazine, published in the March 27, 2014 issue. "There'll be some really bad things that happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism," Gates said in response to a question about his greatest fear when looking 50 years into the future. Gates also declared that "America is way better today than it's ever been," citing invention as the "true driver of progress." On a minute-by-minute basis, Gate's days are organized for him, comparable to the US President's schedule.
Private life
Gates married Melinda French in Hawaii on January 1, 1994, after being named one of Good Housekeeping's "50 Most Eligible Bachelors" in 1985. Jennifer Katharine (born 1996), Rory John (born 1999), and Phoebe Adele are their three children (born 2002). The Gates family lives in the Gates' home, which is an earth-sheltered house on the edge of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington, near Seattle. According to public data from King County, the property's total assessed value (land plus home) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000. The 66,000-square-foot (6,100-square-meter) estate has a 60-foot (18-meter) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500-square-foot (230-square-meter) gym and a 1,000-square-foot (93-square-meter) dining room. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said of his beliefs, "I think religious moral systems are incredibly important." We've raised our children in a religious environment; they've attended Melinda's Catholic church, which I also attend. I've been extremely fortunate, and I owe it to the world to strive to decrease unfairness. That is, after all, a religious conviction. At the very least, it's a moral conviction. Gates remarked in the same interview: "I agree with individuals like Richard Dawkins that creation myths were necessary for humans. We sought incorrect answers for disease, the weather, and other phenomena before we truly understood them. Science has now filled in some – but not all – of the gaps that religion used to fill. However, the world's mystery and beauty are overwhelming, and there is no scientific explanation for how they came to be. To claim it was generated by random numbers seems, you know, a little harsh. I think it's reasonable to believe in God, but I'm not sure what decisions you'll make differently as a result of it." The Codex Leicester, a collection of works by Leonardo da Vinci that Gates purchased for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994, is one of his private possessions. Gates is also a voracious reader, with a quote from The Great Gatsby etched on the ceiling of his expansive home library. He also enjoys playing tennis, golf, and bridge. From 1993 to 2007, Gates was the richest person on the Forbes 400 list, and from 1995 to 2007, he was the richest person on Forbes' list of The World's Richest People. Gates' net worth momentarily topped $101 billion in 1999, prompting the media to dub him a "centibillionaire." Gates used to fly coach despite his affluence and intensive business travel until 1997 when he purchased a private jet. Due to a drop in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and multibillion-dollar donations he has made to his philanthropic foundations, the nominal worth of his Microsoft assets has fallen since 2000. Gates said in a May 2006 interview that he wished he wasn't the world's richest man because he loathed the attention it brought. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires List, Gates was the second wealthiest person in March 2010 after Carlos Slim, but he recovered the top spot in 2013. In June 2014, Carlos Slim reclaimed the role (but then lost the top position back to Gates). Outside of Microsoft, Gates has many investments, including a $616,667 salary and a $350,000 bonus for a total of $966,667 in 2006. In 1989, he started Corbis, a digital image startup. He joined Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm led by long-time friend Warren Buffett, as a director in 2004. When discussing his gaming habits in 2016, he stated that he was colorblind.
Philanthropy
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Bill and Melinda
Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and established the "William H. Gates Foundation" in 1994 by selling some of his Microsoft stock. In 2000, Bill Gates and his wife merged three family foundations to form the nonprofit Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was named the world's biggest charitable foundation by the Funds for NGOs firm in 2013, with assets estimated to be worth more than $34.6 billion. Unlike other big charity organizations such as the Wellcome Trust, the Foundation gives contributors access to information about how their money is spent. Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division and Global Policy & Advocacy Division are the foundation's four program areas. David Rockefeller's generosity and enormous philanthropy, according to Gates, was a key influence. Gates and his father visited with Rockefeller multiple times, and their charitable activity is inspired by the Rockefeller family's philanthropy goal, which is to address global issues that governments and other organizations ignore. Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America in 2007, having donated over $28 billion to charity; the couple intends to devote 95 percent of their wealth to charity in the future. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the use of GMOs in agricultural development. The foundation is helping the International Rice Research Institute develop Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant that can help people with Vitamin A deficiency.
Personal
Gates' wife advised that people should follow in the footsteps of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of the proceeds, as documented in the book The Power of Half. Gates and his wife asked Joan Salwen to speak about the family's efforts in Seattle, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge." The vow commits all three to donate at least half of their money to charity throughout the course of their lives. In a Reddit "ask me anything," Gates remarked that "first, the machines will do a lot of things for us and will not be highly intelligent." That should be a good thing if we handle it properly. After a few decades, though, the intelligence has grown to the point that it is a source of concern. On this, I agree with Elon Musk and a few others, and I'm not sure why some others are unconcerned. Gates stated in a March 2015 interview with Baidu CEO Robin Li that he would "strongly suggest" Nick Bostrom's latest book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, and Strategies. In addition, Bill Gates has made personal donations to educational institutions. Gates gave $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999 to fund the construction of the "William H. Gates Building," a computer laboratory designed by architect Frank O. Gehry. While Microsoft had previously provided financial support to the organization, this was Gates' first personal gift. The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences' Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory is named after the mothers of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the School's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft) and donated funds for the lab's construction. Gates also contributed $6 million to the development of the Gates Computer Science Building on the Stanford University campus, which was completed in January 1996. The building houses Stanford's Engineering department's Computer Science Department (CSD) and Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL). After Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg challenged him, Bill Gates posted a video of himself dumping a bucket of ice water over his head on August 15, 2014, in order to raise awareness about the disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Since around 2005, Bill Gates and his organization have been interested in addressing global sanitation issues, for example by announcing the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge," which has garnered a lot of media attention. In 2014, Bill Gates drank water that was "made from human feces" to raise awareness for the subject of sanitation and possible remedies — in fact, it was manufactured by a sewage sludge treatment technology called the Omni-processor. He also went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in early 2015, challenging him to taste the difference between this reclaimed water and bottled water. Bill and Melinda Gates have stated that they aim to leave a $10 million legacy to each of their three children. They look to be on track to give away 99.96 percent of their money, with only $30 million remaining in the family.
Criticism
The organization was chastised by the Los Angeles Times in 2007 for investing in corporations that have been accused of increasing poverty, polluting extensively, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell to underdeveloped countries. The foundation announced a review of its investments to examine social responsibility in response to public criticism. It later canceled the evaluation and stuck to its objective of investing for the highest possible return while exercising voting rights to influence business behavior. Ernest W. Lefever has criticized the Gates Millennium Scholars program for excluding Caucasian pupils. The United Negro College Fund oversees the scholarship program. Bill Gates triggered a protest in Vancouver in 2014 when he announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would donate $50 million to UNAIDS for the purpose of mass circumcision in Zambia and Swaziland.
Recognition
Just days before his 32nd birthday, Gates was named a billionaire in Forbes magazine's 400 Richest People in America issue in 1987. He was worth $1.25 billion as the world's youngest self-made billionaire, up from $900 million the year before when he first appeared on the list. Gates was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential persons of the twentieth century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. For their humanitarian efforts, Time named Gates, his wife Melinda, and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year. He was voted eighth on a list of "Heroes of Our Time" in 2006. Gates was voted CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in Time's "Top 50 Cyber Elite" in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and named one of the "Top 100 influential persons in media" by The Guardian in 2001. Gates was named the fourth most powerful person in the world by Forbes in 2012, up from fifth in 2011. He was named the British Computer Society's tenth Distinguished Fellow in 1994. Gates received the President's Medal from the New York Institute of Technology in 1999. In 2000, Gates received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit in Breukelen, the Netherlands; KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden; Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan; Tsinghua University in Beijing, China; Harvard University in June 2007; Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden; and Cambridge University in June 2009. In 2007, he became an honorary trustee of Peking University. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth II named Gates an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). He received the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle in November 2006, along with his wife Melinda, who received the Insignia of the same order, for their philanthropic work in the areas of health and education around the world, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un pas de lectures." For his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work, Gates received The Franklin Institute's Bower Award for Business Leadership in 2010. In 2010, the Boy Scouts of America presented him with the Silver Buffalo Award, the organization's highest honor for adults, for his service to youth. Bill Gates' flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, was named after him by entomologists in 1997. Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service to the Disadvantaged in 2002. The Tech Awards presented Gates with the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award in 2006. In 2015, Gates and his wife Melinda were awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian honor, for their contributions to the country's social welfare. Investments and commercial ventures from outside the company Bill Gates owns Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding firm formed in the United States and headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. Bill Gates created bgC3, a new think-tank company. Corbis is a corporation that provides digital picture licensing and rights management services. TerraPower is a firm that designs nuclear reactors. ResearchGate is a scientific social networking platform. Along with other investors, Gates took part in a $35 million funding round. Books, films, social media, and radio are all excellent sources of information. Books Bill Gates has written two books to date: The Road Ahead was published in November 1995, co-written by Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and writer Peter Rinearson. It summed up the consequences of the personal computing revolution and outlined how the coming of a global information superhighway will drastically alter the future. Business At the Speed of Thought, published in 1999, examines how business and technology are intertwined, as well as how digital infrastructures and information networks might aid in gaining a competitive advantage. Documentaries (TV miniseries) The Machine That Changed the World (1990) The Nerds Have Won! (1996) Nerds 2.0.1 is a game about nerds (1998) Waiting for "Superman" to arrive (2010) The Revolution of the Internet (2010)
Films for the big screen
From the early 1970s through 1997, a film called Pirates of Silicon Valley traces the rise of Apple and Microsoft. Anthony Michael Hall plays Bill Gates. Gates is the subject of a modern assassination in the documentary 2002: Nothing So Strange. Steve Sires plays Bill Gates, who makes a brief appearance at the beginning. The Social Network, a film about the development of Facebook, was released in 2010. Steve Sires plays Bill Gates. Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates: The Battle for Control of the Personal Computer, 1974–1999: National Geographic Channel original film for the American Genius series.
Use of social media
Gates was named a LinkedIn Influencer in 2013.
Film and video clips
1983: At the Macintosh pre-launch event, Steve Jobs hosts Bill Gates in a Macintosh dating game (with Steve Jobs and Mitch Kapor, references the television show, The Dating Game) 2007: At the D5 Conference, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates meet.
Radio
On January 31, 2016, Bill Gates was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, where he discussed his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting his future wife Melinda Ann French, the founding of Microsoft, and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week"). On a desert island, he would bring "Blue Skies" by Willie Nelson for music, "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker for reading, and a DVD Collection of Lectures from The Teaching Company for luxury.
Biography of Bill Gates II Success Story II Microsoft II Children & Wife