The Road Ahead

By Bill Gates

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose. And it’s an unreliable guide to the future. What seems like the perfect business plan or latest technology today may soon be as out-of-date as the eight-track tape player, the vacuum-tube television, or the mainframe computer. I’ve watched it happen. Careful observation of many companies over a long period of time can teach you principles that will help with strategies for the years ahead.

(Gates, Myhrvold, and Rinearson 1995, 35)

A more serious concern than individual overindulgence is the vulnerability that could result from society’s heavy reliance on the highway. This network, and the computer-based machines connected to it, will form society’s new playground, new workplace, and new classroom.It will replace physical tender. It will subsume most existing forms of communication. It will be our photo album, our diary, our boombox.This versatility will be the strength of the network, but it will also mean we will become reliant on it.Reliance can be dangerous. During the New York City blackouts in 1965 and 1977, millions of people were in trouble at least for a few hours because of their dependence on electricity. They counted on electric power for light, heat, transport, and security. When electricity failed, people were trapped in elevators, traffic lights stopped working, and electric water pumps quit. Anything really useful is missed when you lose it.A complete failure of the information highway is worth worrying about. Because the system will be thoroughly decentralized, any single outage is unlikely to have a widespread effect. If an individual server fails, it will be replaced and its data restored. But the system could be susceptible to assault. As the system becomes more important, we will have to design in more redundancy. One area of vulnerability is the system’s reliance on cryptography-the mathematical locks that keep information safe.