Tag: technology

Source Code by Bill Gates – Book

From a Google Image Search – Gates Notes

Bill Gates’ memoir of his early years, Source Code, is readable and interesting. For all you nerds who are kicking yourself in the slats (a saying from my dad) for not tinkering in your garage or your basement until you came up with a multimillion-dollar product, that is not the path that took Bill Gates to his enormous fortune. While it is true that Gates did not finish college, he was lucky to have parents who, although they at first tried to rein him in and polish him up, eventually learned that he needed space, not supervision and they were able to adjust their parenting tactics. They sent their son to a school that catered to high IQ kids.

Until the point that Gates was enrolled in Lakeside Academy, he never felt that he belonged, and other children did not accept him. He had learned to be the class clown which won him some popularity, but did not challenge his true talents. Who knows, perhaps if he had continued in public school, he would have been a stand-up comic rather than a computer geek. Lakeside had access to a very early computer, which had to be connected to a main frame computer outside of the school grounds. Companies often agreed to put these monsters in schools where professors, teachers, and students could take advantage of them. An added advantage of this arrangement was the innovations that come out of young minds.

This first computer, a PDP-10 was great for writing reports, but it didn’t do anything fun. Memory which consisted of paper cards or tapes and was kludgy, messy, and offered little security. Gates set out with some friends to write BASIC programs that tweaked this behemoth. There was no such thing as a personal computer.

Bill Gates and friends read about a set you could buy to build your own computer, from a company called Altair. The computer had no keyboard, no monitor, and very little memory. But lots of nerdy folks wanted to build one. Bill Gates, et al, wrote code to beef up the little Altair computer so it could actually be used for tasks and rudimentary games. As more and more companies saw that computers were going to be good for both work and play, that they would make money, other companies produced personal computers. Gates worked with a company called MITS and wrote a BASIC code that was making that company more profitable (for a while). MITS entangled the Gates group of guys into signing away their rights to their “source code”. Before his crew could sell any more code as software, they had to go to court to win back the rights to their own source code. Fortunately Bill’s dad was a lawyer.

Eventually Gates and his friend Paul Allen formed the company Microsoft. Bill did not do most of the coding, although for a while these friends and others who drifted in and out of the group spent time coding nonstop for many days and nights, sleeping on floors in computer rooms, to meet deadlines for coding products. Gates, in later days, worked the business side of Micro-soft which became Microsoft.

Bill Gates’ parents were not wealthy, but they were not poor either. His dad was a lawyer, and his mother eventually headed the United Way in Seattle, Washington. Gates was a reader. He also joined the Boy Scouts and became a hiker, a climber of smaller mountains, and he grew to love the outdoors. His family rented a cabin at place called Cheerio and eventually built a summer home there, shared by his whole family. He was fortunate that his parents came to understand his learning style and sent him to a progressive school. 

Although he did drop out of Harvard before his junior year, he had so many chances to work on rare computer systems, to learn coding, and to do so in an age when computer nerds wanted to get computers to do more (especially in gaming). Gates has two sisters, Kristi and Libby. They were a close and supportive family. Some computer developers may have had to tinker in the garage or the basement, but this is not true for Bill Gates. Quite a while ago I read a biography about Warren Buffet, The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. Although Buffet was not a computer guy, his early life is very similar to Bill Gates’ early years. Alas, neither book offers a clear path to financial greatness unless you are cut from the same cloth as these guys. Gates is working on another memoir which begins where this one leaves off.

2054 by Ackerman and Stavridis-Book

From a Google Image Search – NPR

Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis have written a book about the future with the title 2054, a follow-up to their book 2034. The government in America is divided between two dueling parties, the Truthers and the Dreamers, that I had difficulty differentiating. There is also an ancient obstructer in the Senate named Wisecarver, who might remind you of Mitch McConnell. To please both factions the President and Vice President are not from the same party. A Civil War seems to be brewing. 

President Castro, a seemingly healthy middle-aged man, dies suddenly of a heart attack. After examining the President’s heart there are indications that it has been genetically edited. This is not the same heart that the doctors have examined in the past. Has someone figured out how to edit genes from a distance? Has someone managed to create the Singularity? Can humans and computers now merge? Why does anyone want to pursue the Singularity when the technology carries with it a strong possibility of human extinction? President Castro was not a popular figure, and he is soon replaced with President Smith, previously Vice President Smith. Divisions escalate. 

Besides what is going on in the government of America there is a cast of characters who are involved with gene editing and who are trying to trace down those who were working on this science and on the Singularity. Sarah Hunt who has recently died or disappeared is a key figure although we are left with her daughter Julia Hunt because most people believe that Sarah Hunt is dead. Julia, who has been working in the government is also a marine, who is sent back to her barracks under the new administration. We have BT and Michi in the hunt for Dr. Kurzweil, and we have Lily Bao, involved in a secret relationship with Nick Shriver, the new Vice President, but also pursued by Zhao Jin of China who wants her to come home. We also have Ashni traveling with her dad. She is trying to find Dr. Kurzweil because he is the last hope for keeping her father alive. Several groups set off at the same time to find Dr. Kurzweil who has retreated into isolation and who has been working on both gene editing and the Singularity. 

This is a good story, but it is quite complicated and just reading it makes more sense than trying to explain the plot twists. What makes the book interesting is the relevance to currently trending topics and situations. Although I found it to be all plot and little substance some of the characters did connect with me well enough that I was interested in what was happening to them. The ending surprised me and perhaps it will surprise you too. This is a book to entertain you on a quiet Sunday afternoon or a sleepless night. The authors weigh in on whether we should try to create the Singularity.