Yesterday, Bill Gates announced that he has left the board of directors of Microsoft Corporation. I want to take this opportunity to reflect on his career and his legacy.
A Hero Hated by Society
Bill Gates is a hero, and he should be recognized as a hero by our culture. Unfortunately, for the duration of his career, he was not regarding as a hero. He was, instead, generally regarded as an evil man, who’s strong arm business tactics was a public detriment. He was protested. He was mocked. He had pies thrown in his face by random strangers. The amount of hatred and malevolence directed at this hero is shockingly tragic.
To be completely honest and transparent, I must admit that I fell into this same camp when I was younger. More precisely, I held this view prior to my introduction to, and subsequent integration of, the philosophy of Objectivism.
Revolutionary Operating System
A brief and objective reflection on the accomplishments of Bill Gates is truly astounding. He was able to establish MS-DOS as the standard for the IBM personal computer. As part of his deal with IBM, Gates negotiated the ability for Microsoft to market their MS-DOS operating system to PC manufacturers other than IBM. IBM agreed to this because they did not anticipate the entry of any credible competitors.
However, IBM was wrong. Instead of dominating the at-home PC market, Mr Gates’ deal ushered in a massive flood of hardware competitors. In these days, they were called the IBM clones – or IBM compatibles. By establishing the operating system as the standard, he made the particular hardware the commodity. Suddenly whatever particular hardware manufacturer created the hardware didn’t matter, as long as it was compatible with MS-DOS – because the software applications running on the PCs were compatible with the MS-DOS operating system – they did not need to be compatible with the underlying hardware. Thus MS-DOS quickly became the de facto standard for the at-home PC market. A market that would soon explode.
Apple’s Partner
In today’s world, I don’t think many people are aware of how involved Bill Gates was with Apple Corporation. Instead, they see Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as bitter rivals who hated each other. But I think this view is false, in light of the history of how the two worked together.
In the early days of Apple, Steve Wozniak created a version of BASIC for the Apple II, however the language lacked a critical feature. It has no support for floating point operations. This means that the computer could deal only with round integers (i.e. 3, or 8, or 213). Floating point support would allow it to deal with decimal numbers (i.e. 3.4, or 7.25, or 217.842). Mr Gates traveled to Apple’s headquarters to work on this feature and ultimately contribute the solution for Apple.
Why would Bill Gates have done this?
He did it because a significant portion of Microsoft’s revenue came from software sales on Apple hardware. In fact, Microsoft Excel was first published for the Apple. And, as revealed in the Macintosh dating game, Gates expected Microsoft to earn more than half its revenue from software sales on the new computer. Ultimately, the Macintosh flopped, and Steve Jobs left Apple in the aftermath.
However, when Jobs returned to Apple, Bill Gates was once again deeply involved in the success of the company. When Jobs returned, Apple was massively in debt, had failing products (the Newton), and was likely to close its doors in a matter of months. It’s at this time that Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple.
A Lasting Legacy
This is simply a quick overview of some of Gates’s specific accomplishments. If we broaden the picture a bit, we see a man who was essential to changing the world. His vision, and his drive, put a computer in every home. From today’s world, that even seems quaint as the typical home now has many computers, laptops, cell phones, smart tvs and other devices, etc – but at one time it was a radical vision.
Bill Gates and his work positively impacted the life of nearly every human being on the planet. And he made a fortune doing it.
He should be held up and revered as a hero. Instead, our society only grants him a modicum of appreciation for now giving away the fortune that he rightly earned.
Making It Right
Unfortunately, I don’t see our society making it right with Mr Gates in his lifetime. If there is any widespread social re-evaluation of his character, I believe it will happen long after his passing. I’d like to finish up with what I think society making it right would look like.
There’s a story from antiquity that I think fits well. A young Julius Caesar is in campaign in Spain (Hispaniola to the Romans), when he happens upon a statue of Alexander the Great. Caesar is recording as falling down to his knees and crying out in despair that by the time he was Caesar’s age Alexandar had already conquered the world – while Caesar himself had accomplished nothing. Of course, Julius Caesar goes on to conquer Gual, win a civil war against the Roman Republic and establish the beginnings of the Roman Empire.
Now I want to picture something similar in todays’ world. A young person, filled with visions of revolutionizing the computer industry, walks up to a statue of Bill Gates. Overcome with emotion, this person falls to the ground and cries out that he/she has accomplished nothing while Gates had (by this age) accomplished so much. And this young person goes on to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world.
That is when I’ll know that society has finally made it right with Bill Gates.
Ryan Sawatzky 