Informational tools are symbolic mediators that amplify the intellect rather than the muscle of their users … these tools … are helping us now by making it much easier to store and transmit information that is already in digital form, but in the near future they will allow us access to almost any information in the world.
Predictor: Gates, Bill
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Road Ahead,” Microsoft CEO Bill Gates writes: ”Much of human progress has come about because someone invented a better and more powerful tool. Physical tools speed up work and rescue people from hard labor. The plow and the wheel, the crane and the bulldozer, amplify the physical abilities of those using them. Informational tools are symbolic mediators that amplify the intellect rather than the muscle of their users É A great deal of work now involves decision-making and knowledge, so information tools have become, and will continue increasingly to be, the focus of inventors. Just as any text could be represented with an arrangement of letters, these tools allow information of all types to be represented in digital form, in a pattern of electrical pulses that is easy for computers whose purpose is to manipulate information. They are helping us now by making it much easier to store and transmit information that is already in digital form, but in the near future they will allow us access to almost any information in the world. In the United States, the connecting of all these computers has been compared to another massive project: the gridding of the country with interstate highways, which began in the Eisenhower era.”
Biography:Bill Gates, the most influential technology entrepreneur of the late 20th century, was the primary author of the prediction-packed 1995 book “The Road Ahead” and is the founder and CEO of Microsoft Corporation. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: The Road Ahead (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 1: A Revolution Begins
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 5
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney