More than a few of the writers in this month’s paper seem to be questioning how our country got to this current place. It’s of course something I’ve been trying to figure out as well.
Lots of other people are also wondering. One of them is Bill Gates.
Bill and I are just about the same age. He got involved in the computer world a bit earlier than I did—in 1975 when he started selling his own version of BASIC. Back then I was still hanging out at places like the Lone Star Cafe.
But by the early 1980’s I became fully involved in the personal computer industry when the paper I was working for (some of you might remember The Villager), was able to get one of the original IBM PC’s, complete with MS DOS 1.1, dBase and Wordstar software and an Okidata 84 printer.
Since there was nobody else who could do it, I was given the task of trying to figure out how to write software to keep track of subscriptions at both the Villager, and the other paper we owned, the Brooklyn Phoenix. In those days business software had to all be custom written.
In the process of figuring it all out, I became hooked on computers, and devoured every issue of PC Magazine, PC World and Computer Shopper. I became fast friends with a publisher in Westchester who had a head start on me, already selling newspaper mailing software he wrote in BASIC.
We talked nerd talk on the phone as we were working late at night at our respective businesses, and one of the things we talked about was Microsoft’s practice of putting out an operating system, waiting to see what software smaller companies would write to fill in the features that they didn’t think of, and then copying those features to add to their next version of Windows.
We decided that Bill Gates was more of a good businessman than an innovator, which ended up making him one of the first tech billionaires.
Then he retired and made friends with Warren Buffet and did things like help to eradicate river blindness in Africa. He went from being an idea thief to a do-gooder, which was redeeming.
An article in the NY Times the other day about his soon to be published memoir speaks of his’ own misgivings of what his industry has wrought. I quote:
“Incredible things happened because of sharing information on the internet,” Mr. Gates said. That much he anticipated. But once social media companies like Facebook and Twitter came along, “you see ills that I have to say I did not predict.”
Political divisiveness accelerated by technology? “I didn’t predict that would happen,” he said. Technology being used as a weapon against the broader public interests? “I didn’t predict that,” he said.
Mr. Gates is a techno-optimist but he has limits, like cryptocurrency. Does it have any use?
“None,” he said. “There are people with high I.Q.s who have fooled themselves on that one.”
Even artificial intelligence, which Mr. Gates has spoken of enthusiastically, and which Microsoft is heavily invested in, produces a few qualms. “Now we have to worry about bad people using A.I.,” he said.”
So it’s not just my friends, writers here, and myself that can’t quite figure things out. Him too.
I was talking to my friend Eliot today about how there seem to be a huge number of people who are completely disrespectful of others who are more traditional in their views of government. I mean that on both extremes.
He told me that what was I was seeing (the comments pages of various online publications) were full of Russian and Chinese bots. He also mentioned that a generation growing up with Fox News has also been harmful to civil discourse.
Whatever it is, what is going on right now with the federal government goes against everything I learned in economics and international relations classes I took at a graduate program at the New School. The fact that the “Deep State” has gone from being the Tri-Lateral Commission to the Federal Government shows the insidious effects that conspiracy theorists can have.
But the biggest thing I learned in my economics class was the adage “follow the money.”
The other day Bernie spoke about the things Trump didn’t talk about at his inauguration. Then he pointed out why.
Because the three tech billionaires who are worth more together than the lower 50% of the whole country were sitting right there behind him on the dais .
Beautifully said, George. Yes, all those things we learned at the New School, and before and after, seem to be shredded. Tech gone berserk, algorithms and bots feeding lies and hate, spineless politicians – sorry, spelled GOP, and fear empowering autocracies. The arc of history doesn’t appear to be bending toward justice now. Let’s hope that the law can save this country before it’s too late, and that the people will wake up.
Wow Bill, thanks for reading and remembering me! It’s exactly true, ever since Putin invaded Ukraine, the world has gone topsy turvy, at least the world that we thought was settled international law back in 2009. Especially now. The vitriol I not only see online, but occasionally from people I know are shocking. What I remember vividly is studying the Rwanda massacre, with the understanding that people went nuts because of what they were hearing on state radio. People who otherwise act civilize feel empowered when authority allows them to be. And it’s happening here.
PS – my column this month in my Brooklyn paper starts off with an explanation of “Public Good” in reference to a luxury hi-rise land grab the city is taking on the shores of Red Hook. We had a good education. And actually, just a few weeks ago I went to a lecture featuring Richard Wolff who I took a couple courses with. He’s still fighting the same battles (a little bit extreme at least to my thinking, but always thought provoking).
I was associated with Wolff’s wife, Harriet Fraad, for awhile, relating to psychohistory. Some very useful ideas in that realm pertinent to our present woes. See, for instance, Volkan, Staub, Reich, DeMause, Lakoff, and Erikson, among others.