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Essay on The Road Ahead By Bill Gates

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In his book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates relates to a non-technical audience the history, growth, and future of technology. He discusses how the trends, technologies, and issues of the Information Age are affecting society. Gates makes predictions and gives advice on how to adapt and succeed in the future of incredible change in computing and communicating. His book is written with two major concerns: the development and future of technology, and its influence on society.
Bill Gates begins by explaining how computers will be interconnected globally in what will be called the information superhighway. Of course the precursor to this network is the currently used Internet. The development and use of this interactive network is the main …show more content…

The cost for these networks is still extremely high, so it won't be available for at least a decade to the majority of the homes in the United States. This is an example of how general-purpose devices are replacing special-purpose devices. Video-on-demand will replace VCRs in the same way that telephone answering machines have evolved into voicemail. Gates feels that high-definition television will not catch on until the broadband network is in use, and so screens for TV and PC will improve in quality and that most will be flat-panel displays. Bill Gates goes into detail concerning an appliance called the wallet PC. It sends e-mails and faxes, displays messages and schedules, and stores digital money, among other things. Precursors to this wallet PC that are out on the market include cellphones, pagers, and personal digital assistants. To help with the overwhelming task of finding information, Gates suggests the use of queries, filters, spatial navigation, links, and agents as primary selection techniques. 'Softer software,'; which seems to get smarter as you use it, would be used like an agent. When these agents take on a personality, they become 'social user interfaces.'; In order to be useful these agents will have to know information. With this information being stored on the Internet, it brings up the issue of privacy and security. Bill Gates suggests the use prime numbers as one-way functions.

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