Bill Gates Made These 15 Predictions Back in 1999 -- It's Scary How Accurate He Was

[Midpack]

https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/327229

I remember he also predicted asynchronous TV in his 1995 book The Road Ahead. And now we have lots of On Demand Streaming Apps...

In 1999, Bill Gates wrote a book titled Business @ the Speed of Thought.In the book, Gates made 15 bold predictions that at the time might have sounded outrageous.
But as Markus Kirjonen, a business student, once noted on his blog, Gates' forecasts turned out to be eerily prescient.
Here are the 15 predictions Gates made just about 20 years ago -- and how close they've come to being true.

 

[ERD50]

Honestly, I'm not sure any of those count as "predictions" in 1999. Some form of all of that was near production at the time. You could summarize most of those as "the internet will be used for a variety of things in the future".

Gates' prediction: "People will carry around small devices that allow them to constantly stay in touch and do electronic business from wherever they are. They will be able to check the news, see flights they have booked, get information from financial markets, and do just about anything else on these devices."

OK, so really all that says is you can access the internet on a mobile device. Not even a prediction:

https://royal.pingdom.com/15-fantastic-firsts-on-the-internet/

The first mobile phone with Internet access The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator. It was launched in Finland back in 1996

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

Gates' prediction: "People will pay their bills, take care of their finances, and communicate with their doctors over the internet."

https://royal.pingdom.com/15-fantastic-firsts-on-the-internet/

The first online bank The first financial institution to offer online internet banking services to all of its customers was Stanford Federal Credit Union in October, 1994.

Since you can communicate over the internet, communicating with your Doctor is just an example, not a 'prediction'. He could have just as well said "your mechanic", or "your drug dealer", or "your prostitute".

Gates' prediction: "While watching a sports competition on television, services will allow you to discuss what is going on live, and enter a contest where you vote on who you think will win."

You could do that on a BBS, before the internet was even 'a thing'.


Many/most of his 'predictions' already happened!

Wasn't Microsoft infamous for being slow to adopt internet connectivity? I think we know why.


-ERD50

 

[braumeister]

Many/most of his 'predictions' already happened!

Yes, I could have made all those predictions and more at least 5-7 years before Gates wrote that. In fact, I was working on some of those things in the software industry before he wrote them. I'd bet others here were doing so as well.

The OP article is just a good example of clickbait.

 

[ERD50]

...The OP article is just a good example of clickbait.

Something that Bill Gates did not predict!

-ERD50

 

[Lakewood90712]

IIRC , Gates , and other tech geezers , (is that a legitimate urban slang term ?) have recently been ringing alarm bells about A.I. Might be one of the wealthiest on the planet, but still concerned for future generations .

 

[Sunset]

IIRC , Gates , and other tech geezers , (is that a legitimate urban slang term ?) have recently been ringing alarm bells about A.I. Might be one of the wealthiest on the planet, but still concerned for future generations .

Yes, but humans are doomed.

Skynet will be reality.

.......Resistance is Futile....

 

[COcheesehead]

If it has a slideshow...it’s clickbait.

 

[jimbee]

Bill Gates may have realized a lot of that was already happening in 1999 if he hadn't been stuck with MS-DOS and MS Windows.

 

[audreyh1]

The Blackberry came out in 1999.