Email from Bill (1993)

One of the carefully orchestrated PR articles at the height of the investigations into Microsoft. Even in the early &#x27;90s, Microsoft were operating at genius level for their control of public discussion about the company.<p>One of my all-time favorite bullshit claims is the &quot;Gates always flies coach when he is traveling on business.&quot; and the hilariously ridiculous &quot;Experienced fliers into and out of Seattle know to scan the cabin for a man with a blanket over his head—that’s Bill Gates, taking a nap.&quot;<p>Total bullshit; even then, no-airline would have Bill Gates check in as an economy passenger and not instantly upgrade him and move mere mortals well away from him. The article even talks about Gate&#x27;s temper just before the coach claim - no-one would risk their career or livelihood by failing to treat him with super-special billionaire status.

&quot;Email is not a good way to get mad at someone since you can’t interact. You can send friendly messages very easily since those are harder to misinterpret.&quot; LOL

I love the journalist’s email, with uppercase letters and all: 73124.1524@CompuServe.COM<p>I also love how they spell it “E-mail” with a capital E no matter where it is in the sentence.

I&#x27;m too young to have imagined thinking about Bill Gates the way we think about Zuckerberg today but reading this, it occurs to me that people must have.

Wow, what a time warp that article was. I see many parallels between Zuck’s Metaverse and Bill’s information highway. You can try to predict what the future devices will look like, if the idea is already there, but it’s not cohesive enough to make a winning strategy.

It’s surprising to me how many tech companies wanted to dominate the TV set top box in the 90s.

it&#x27;s an amazing testament to bill gates&#x27;s cluelessness that this entire 12000 word article about writing email over the internet, when the www was already three years old, doesn&#x27;t mention the word &#x27;internet&#x27; even once<p>nor, obviously, &#x27;html&#x27;, &#x27;web&#x27;, &#x27;www&#x27;, &#x27;gopher&#x27;, or &#x27;ftp&#x27;

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;B0l8g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;B0l8g</a>

&gt; My original vision of a personal computer on every desk and every home will take more than 15 years to achieve.<p>1993+15 = 2008.<p>He was correct but I think he was off by at least 7-8 years..

&gt; Our email is completely secure. . . .<p>It&#x27;s very interesting looking back at historical software&#x2F;communication, and realizing how wrong we have been about so many things, and realizing how wrong we likely are about many others.