Your television set will not look like a computer and won’t have a keyboard, but the additional electronics inside or attached will make it architecturally a computer like a PC. Television sets will connect to the highway via a set-top box similar to ones supplied today by most cable TV companies.
Predictor: Gates, Bill
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Road Ahead,” Microsoft CEO Bill Gates writes: ”Your television set will not look like a computer and won’t have a keyboard, but the additional electronics inside or attached will make it architecturally a computer like a PC. Television sets will connect to the highway via a set-top box similar to ones supplied today by most cable TV companies. But these new set-top boxes will include a very powerful general-purpose computer. The box may be located inside a television, behind a television, on top of a television, on a basement wall, or even outside the house. Both the PC and the set-top box will connect to the information highway and conduct a ‘dialogue’ with the switches and servers of the network, retrieving information and programming and relaying the subscriber’s choices.”
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: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Internet Appliances
Name of publication: The Road Ahead (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 4: Applications and Appliances
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 70
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney