by Bill Gates

with Nathan Myhrvold

and Peter Rinearson

Russian edition, 1996

Biblio-Globus, 39 rubles


People who have somehow missed the essential moments of the IT revolution and would like to learn what was it all about will find this book quite helpful. Gates uses very simple language for a brief history of computer technologies and illustrates it with many examples. If your first computer was some Pentium 100 with 8 MB RAM which couldn’t support your copy of Doom or Quake and you were very much upset with this, you will be surprised to find out about yesterday’s puffing monsters with much less power than your electric kettle. Gates explains his idea of the information superhighway that may emerge from today’s Internet. Most of the book could easily go under the title "I Have a Dream." Gates has a dream to connect every last bit of information and every person into a single information superhighway, which will become a universal instrument for business, education, entertainment, living and probably dreaming as well. Actually, it is really rather touching to read all this and dream along with Gates at the same time as your Internet connection keeps breaking up every five minutes.

The book does not reveal any recipes on how to become a billionaire. (Our small planet definitely won’t be able to support another Micro$oft’s annual revenues in any case.) However, looking through the pages on how Microsoft was built, would-be monopolists may draw some essential conclusions. If you have ideas that could turn into profitable business but you don’t have startup capital, maybe you can follow Gates’ steps. He used to play poker with Paul Allen (his future partner in Microsoft) in a Harvard dormitory, who would occasionally lose some stock to the yet-to-be richest person in the world.

If you’re not sure if it’s worth buying, you can visit the book’s official Website, www.roadahead.com, which also contains updated information. The book was written in 1995 and some parts of it, concerning the future of the industry, have already come true. Go to the Website for the part of the road that is still ahead, not behind.

If you decide to buy the book, be careful while reading it in public. One Russian anecdote may prove to have some grain of truth in it. It says, "A person is looking for Microsoft fans. Gonna kill ’em if he finds any."