Written by: Faris Rasul
Posted on: September 19, 2024 | 
| 中文
Bill Gates and Chinese President Xi Jinping
Anupreeta Das' book on Bill Gates titled Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World is a good read. The author charts the journey of what were the seventies like, the inception of Microsoft, the gimmicks of Gates and how Allen was duped by Gates with under-selling his shares out. Das ably brings to life the time when technology-defined startups were getting into play: Oracle of Ellison and many others. The 80s and 90s were a decade of technological revolution, with people coming into the fold of the Silicon Valley in hordes: against this backdrop Gates became the youngest billionaire at the age of 31 in 1987, as the Microsoft went for the Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Young Bill Gates
Das talks in detail about how Gates was able to work his way around business licensing and was business-savvy from the word go. He was able to make perspicacious decisions that were fundamental to his success. She also talks at length of how the word 'nerd' came to be in popular culture: like 'dusty glasses, slouched posture', which came to characterize Gates or 'eating messy sandwiches in board meetings' that came to define Netscape's Andreessen in the eighties. Das sets out to bust some myths too. She rebuts many claims like the overarching sense of innovation and ambition as being the sole reasons for successes in the Silicon Valley: subsidies to Stanford University helped nurture technologies back in the day, lower interest rates enabled big investors to pour money into vulnerable assets, the development of GPS during the Cold War helped to create a conducive atmosphere for many of these tech companies.
Anupreeta Das
Das later comments on the stereotyping of nerds in popular culture, in line with Gates' own demeanor; nerds came to be associated with being out of sync with the mainstream culture at large, computer-savvy and socially awkward. This is seen as being reinforced in movies and sitcoms like Revenge of the Nerds, The Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley amongst others. As we move on, there is also a mention of the 'male-centric' culture in the Silicon Valley, and how women still have to 'play with the boys' to get a footing in the ecosystem, as more than 90 percent of venture capital funding is given to men, and women are bound to own less equity in companies. Das quotes Margaret O'Mara, a historian of Silicon Valley, saying of the tech-business culture as 'intensely masculine'. Das also writes about the monopolistic behavior that was at work in Microsoft and how it seemed, at times, hell-bent in crushing the competition and maximizing its own clout. She quotes James Clark of the Netscape on the contradictory disposition of Gates, 'For all his nerdy ways and offbeat charm for the press, I feel Bill Gates is happiest when he is crushing the life out of companies that dare establish territory on the borders of Microsoft's sprawling dominion'. Nineties were also a time of greater anti-trust motions against Microsoft's expansive ambitions; with the company either elbowing out or buying the businesses outright. Das gives an example of the Intuit, a financial software company, which resisted a buyout from Microsoft and held its own against its bullying.
Jim Yong Kim, the former president of the World Bank, with Bill Gates
In one of the last chapters entitled 'Cancel Bill', Das reproaches Gates over his closeness with Epstein and recounts his 'visibly shifty' demeanor in an interview with Judy Woodruff in 2021, about being asked about the same, which he blamed on his 'lapse of judgement'. Das writes about how there were many shuffles in the moneyed world of corporate America from Barclays president losing his job to Harvard University shutting down an 'evolutionary dynamics' program and revising its donor policies after a funding by Epstein in 2020. In the same chapter, the bulge of conspiracy theories about Gates during COVID-19 are also discussed, and how his TED talk titled as 'The Next Outbreak? We Are Not Ready' delivered in 2015 came to haunt him in the pandemic. Due to his prior knowledge about such an emergency, and the study that was mutually carried out by MIT and Gates Foundation over storing vaccine information under the skin, in a microchip for better digital certification.
Bill Gates with his kids and ex-wife
Das' latest book brings out the many contradictions of Gates, and makes us question his supposed saintliness that he's been able to project over the decades. This stands in complete contrast to the 'terrifying' work culture at his own foundation, as Das reveals in the book, which has been effective in areas ranging from healthcare to poverty alleviation since 2000. Spanning over 328 pages, the book makes for an informative read and deserves to be in everyone's reading list.
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