So long, Mr. Bill!

The title of 1980’s movie Revenge of the Nerds seems to be the theme of what rose out of the figurative Silicon Valley of the 1970’s. Our current world of personal computers at home, videogames for playing, and abundance of technological gadgets galore all rose out of this new offshoot of the electronics industry with entrepreneurs pioneering new pathways in business. MIT and other colleges with access to powerful computing tech, inspired hustlers and tinkering inventors building new tech industries out of their garages and basements, companies with names like Atari, Apple, and Microsoft emerging from the minds of long haired corduroy wearing whiz kids. The space program and the technological achievements of the rest of the 1900’s (airplanes, movies, radio, television, etc.) prepared us for it and soon these nerdy hippies were going to bring us into “the Future” outright. 

In the 1980’s these tech captains forever changed how the tech-connected world lived its life. An assortment of little machines that we used for leisure as well as business, that we used at home as well as at work and school. In the process they built empires of untold fortune as these captains rode the inevitable tide of technological progress applied to society. Billionaires were made as a world more readily accepted these gadgety artifacts of civilization intimately into their lives. Bill Gates was one of those tide-riding billionaires. And today he retires.

After 33 years, William Henry Gates III (IV) retires from Microsoft, the computer software company he co-founded with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, in order to concentrate more heavily on his philanthropic endeavors with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which he founded with his wife. The move is just the finalization of a series of Gates stepping back from controlling roles in the corporation which began in 2006. Though now fully committed to his charitable organization, the biggest in the world, he will still remain on Microsoft’s Board of Directors as Chairman. 

Bill Gates leaves behind a legacy of both celebration and scorn. Becoming in his career the official richest human being on Earth (from 1993 to 2007 according to Forbes magazine), he naturally became the go-to symbol, the very personification of the gross excess of a capitalistic society - an image which brought about as much awe as it did anger. He was either one who you aspired to be like or one who you maintained to never be anything like. As much as his company influenced the spread the computers used by the masses of society, his soft-spoken sweater-wearing, eyeglassed persona influenced the image of wealth and power. The often-said ruthless businessman with a harmless demeanor who it has been told takes the ideas of others and co-opts them into his company making it the standard while the originator is left holding the bag. The monopolizing corporation with its frustrating products whose control over the computer world resembles that of the gas corporations of 100 years ago. The supposed vision-forward tycoon who ironically has been wrong many times on how technology will develop in the near future. That smug blunt source of irritating quotes for the ages.

Now future fables and cartoon adventures will construct a nerdish slight young White guy in office casual in the role of evil bossman megabucks business owner instead of the old white-haired White guy in the 3 piece suit. Bill Gates’ image is emblazoned onto the eternal argument over the struggle between the economic classes. The story of the company he co-founded continues its chronicles in the mythology known as The American Dream. But Gates’ history was not necessarily from rags to riches.

Bill was born to a wealthy family, the son of a notable lawyer father and a banker mother who served on the board of directors of a major bank and the United Way among other establishments. His father was originally named William Henry Gates III but to avoid an elitist image transformed his name into Jr. as he joined the U.S. Army in the 1940’s. The younger William Gates who would have been IV was given the nickname “Trey” for the III now assigned to his name and was prepared for a career in law following his father’s footsteps. In 8th grade at exclusive prepatory Lakeside School, young Bill detoured from that path with the acquisition of an ASR-33 Teletype, an electronic/mechanical typewriter, and a portion of computer time on the school’s General Electric’s computer. Excused from classes to delve into his newfound hobby, Gates went from programming his own tic-tac-toe program to later exploiting bugs in minicomputers with friends to obtain more computer time resulting in a summer banning of the 4 students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland and Kent Evans (most who would join Bill at Microsoft in the future) .

After the summer ban was over the competitive curious room-bound teen who as a child was bullied because of his smaller size further developed his knowledge of computer programs and the codes that made them work. He and his Lakeside buddies got so good that they were hired to write programs as well as teach computer skills in the classes. After graduation and the death of his friend Kent Evans as a result of a mountain climbing accident, Gates went to Harvard University where he met future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer before eventually dropping out due to his growing ambitions in the computer field. Bonding closer with his remaining Lakeside pals after Evans’ death, Gates and company took their built-up skills in BASIC and set out to start a software company after the release of a new affordable CPU from Intel. He and Allen began Micro-soft (eventually just Microsoft) with him as the businessman with the plan and Allen as the vibrant visionary (fellow friend Ric Weiland joined the company as lead programmer becoming one of its first 5 employees after graduating from Stanford University).

The company with the un-intimidating name (small and soft?) ruffled feathers early on in the open-ended world of computer hobbyists when he forbade reproduction and distribution of Microsoft’s version of BASIC without payment. It wouldn’t be long before Bill Gates’ vision of the computer world would take Microsoft out of its beginnings with sponsor Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems in Albuquerque, New Mexico to the rise to power in the 1980’s with the strategies against tech giant IBM (their once-business partner) in the use of DOS and Windows operating systems. Owning the software and ignoring the hardware, Microsoft put themselves into every home and workplace by default ensuring that with the rise of the computer their name will become just as familiar. Supplanting the company which first brought the people’s computers to the world, Apple, Microsoft under Gates’ influence became a virtually inescapable technological empire which encompasses the world to this day—whether people like that or not. 

From riches to riches reaching more riches, Bill Gates now tries to defy the Biblical verse about wealthy men, heaven, and needles through the actions of his and his wife’s charitable foundation. Will he be as tenacious and competitive in this endeavor as he was in the business world? Well, he’s now only the world’s #3 richest man under buddy Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway at #1 and Mexican telecommunication tycoon Carlos Slim Helú at #2.

Outgoing words from excitable Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who recounts Bill’s encouraging words to him after he thought about quitting Microsoft a month after joining:

“This is what Bill said to me. ‘You don't get it. You don't get it. We are going to put a computer on every desk and in every home.’”

Goodbye, Mr. Bill. Enjoy the blue whether it be water, screen, or sky.