The Road Ahead
by Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, Peter Rinearson · first published 1995
16% recommend68% neutral16% critical
Why HN recommends it
Accessible vision book about the future of software and computing, often read as an early pick for non-technical readers and a source of perspective on Gates' thinking in the mid-1990s.
Common criticism: Several readers say its predictions have aged poorly, especially on the internet and connectivity.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Bill Gates' 1995 analysis of the impact of information and computer technology on society and predictions about the future. Includes a great overview of ancient counting machines to mainframe big-iron to the dramatic changes of personal computing. Talks about the early years of Microsoft, Apple and Steve Jobs, DEC and Compaq, IBM and IBM compatibles. In addition, the importance of software and its complexity, power, and cost of production.
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Read this: * Bill Gates's memoir/vision book, The Road Ahead (1995) * Paul Allen's memoir book, Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft (2011) Watch this: * Pirates of Silicon Valley TV movie (funny but accurate, based on Triumph of the Nerds interviews)…
on “What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?” ↗Anyone who finds this interesting should track down a copy of The Road Ahead (http://www.amazon.com/Road-Ahead-Bill-Gates/dp/9573231670/), the book Gates published at around the same time as this appeared. It's an interesting look at his thinking just when he was beginning to…
on “Content Is King (1996)” ↗Let me suggest "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates. It was one of the first computer/software related books I ever read, and I think it is a classic in the field of software business kind of reads. It is accessible by anyone, even non-techie…
on “Ask YC: Let's start a Hacker News book club” ↗Like others, I wish I had read "The C Programming Language" earlier than when I did (probably did not get to it until my mid-20's or so). However, I am really glad I read "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates while still in high school. That gave me a "vision for the future". So in terms of "what influenced me the most" starting out, it was definitely that.
on “What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?” ↗The Road Ahead by Bill Gates (1995) It made me realize it's not companies I would like to be working at but people I would like to be working with.
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?” ↗How about The Road Ahead - Bill Gates. I loved that book and saw a different personality to Bill Gates other than showed by Media and masses.
on “Ask hackers: what books have you read lately and would recommend me?” ↗I feel that if Microsoft had taken Bill Gates' book "The Road Ahead" and implemented a lot of the ideas in the book they could have preempted Apple and Google by several years! What's amazing to me is that the book is over 15 years old and just now a lot of what he mentioned…
on “For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation” ↗You should read Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead"[1] from 1995 before dismissing things so readily out of hand. It's been a few years since I read it but he describes the setup in detail. It was incredibly complex even by today's standards - and this…
on “GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece of modern techno-insanity” ↗…https://www.geekwire.com/2019/company-backed-bill-gates-clai... Scroll back to 2010, when Bill Gross started working on this. That's when he got funded by that dude whose futurism book about the Information Superhighway, The Road Ahead, didn't mention the internet. In 1995. In 2010, photovoltaic modules cost €1.62 per watt. Concentrating solar power was a promising alternative; it uses the same steam engines used by coal and nuclear…
on “Heliogen’s new tech could unlock renewable energy for industrial manufacturing” ↗…and Zune Phone to combat iPhone, multiple attempts to combat Google, and so forth. Part of this is simply having a shotgun approach, which is a cheap way to diversify your business. After reading The Road Ahead, I got the distinct impression, based on Gates' appraisal of Wang, that his greatest fear for Microsoft was to stay stuck in one product line and be made obsolete by the next big thing, which partially…
on “Google Shows Off its Tablet Concept” ↗…a kind of shotgun strategy where they simultaneously tried to build web browsers and gaming consoles and mobile phone operating systems and MP3 players and webmail and everything else. If you read The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes about Wang, which was enormously successful but missed the PC wave just long enough to go out of business. After Microsoft's own close call with the internet (ironically around the…
on “Google Buzz” ↗…your fingertips Bill Gates Comdex Keynote 1990: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxUPSF2K7Cs * Microsoft's Cairo operating system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) * Bill Gates' The Road Ahead book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_book... * WinFS and its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS The current operating systems haven't really advanced since Windows…
on “The Lurking Smalltalk in Unix and Plan 9 [pdf]” ↗I think his vision of smartphones has held up well. From page 74 of my hardcover copy of The Road Ahead: What do you carry on your person now? Probably at least keys, identification, money, and a watch. Quite possibly you also carry credit cards, a checkbook, traveler's checks, an address book, an appointment…
on “What I learned at work this year” ↗"The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates is an interesting look into what Bill envisioned for the Internet. It came with a CD-ROM full of videos of how devices would be used in schools and workplaces (I thonk law enforcement too…
on “Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?” ↗…narratives and strategies for their own sake. Bill Gates used every CES keynote in recent memory to go on about the "digital decade" and pose "in the year 2000" scenarios. Of course, this was all after The Road Ahead, a vision book which famously had a shorter shelf life than a bag of potato chips. Apparently he's not the only one at Microsoft who suffers from this peculiar affliction. All these strategies for a…
on “Architecture astronauts take over” ↗