Bill Gates has quickly become among the most famous people in the world. The man is a cultural icon of legendary status, and will be remembered in the history books because he's not merely known in the techie circle, but in the general population (contrast Bill Gates to Gordon Moore, for instance).
You know, Sal, there was an article a week or so back in the times about Uzbekistan, where Tamerlane was being rehabilitated as a "hero". Tamerlane, in case you don't know, was a Ghengis Khan type who built an empire in Central Asia, and is mostly known historically for building pyramids out of the skulls of the people he ran over, and other similar niceties. But in Uzbekistan, you take what you can get.
Historically, most people don't put the Rockefellers and Watsons and Rothchilds of the world up there with the Lincolns and Roosevelts and Churchills. Everybody knows Alexander Graham Bell, who knows the name of the guy who built the Bell system? Of course, with Bill in control of all the media, he'll get to write his revisionist history where Microsoft invented the world wide web and the OS and who knows what else, and everybody refused to give him credit. The Robber Barons got the respect their money commanded, but nobody every liked them much, and for all I can see it's not much different with Bill. Except, of course, Microsoft is a public company so there's all kinds of shareholders to repeat the company line as the truth. Bill Gates is famous, sure. To make him into some kind of heroic figure, well, that's a matter of taste.
Cheers, Dan. |
