Bill Gates spoke yesterday at the TechNet event at Stanford University. Here are his thoughts on what changes IT will make in society over the next 10 years:
“Changes are now coming faster than ever. We’ll be seeing more and more students using tablets instead of stacks of books in schools and in online learning. We’ll have computers that can see and learn like people … we’ll continue to see major breakthroughs in software development, in things like voice recognition, gaming [and] video. We’re on to new and important advances in IT, just as we were at the advent of the PC.
In gaming, [the] TV, high-definition video [and] PC are all coming together now in the Xbox. Voice recognition will get better … software and services with improved interfaces wrapped around them will be coming soon. Our new Zune [media player] has built-in Wi-Fi, so you can send your friends music and photos and messages … we’ll continue to see this kind of innovation building on top of what we have today. We’re moving toward more connected entertainment everywhere.”
While it is a very Microsoft-centric view of the future (using tablets instead of books, Xbox, etc), it helps to remind ourselves every now and then of the high level trends for the Web. The theme of connected entertainment is one in which Microsoft is strongly positioning itself, despite the hiccups in this week’s Zune release.
If all goes well for Microsoft (a big ‘if’), in 10 years time they will be the software that powers a lot of connected entertainment – just as in the 80’s and 90’s they provided the OS for the majority of PCs. The multi-billion dollar question is: can they get the same kind of dominance in connected entertainment as in the PC?
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)