Bill Gates and his predictions for the Future

Bill Gates has been named several times in Future Today, primarily for his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but not as a futurist himself. As it often happens, although it’s cultural, a mistake is recognized more than a success, and when we think of Gates and future predictions, quotes like these can come to our minds:

1981: “No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates

1989: “We will never make a 32-bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

The most curious of all is that in 1999, with more wisdom, vision and experience, he wrote a book “Business @ the Speed of Thought” on how business and technology would be integrated in the future, explaining in detail how digital infrastructures and information networks would be a competitive advantage. This book has not passed unnoticed but its projections haven’t had the same effect as the previous ones.

Fortunately the Internet is circular and there is always someone willing to pick up things from the past and bring them to the present. A couple of years ago Business Insider picked up 15 of those 1999 predictions and corroborated that many had come true quite accurately. Last year, Futurism did the same thing but with interviews from the last few years and compiled a new series of projections for the near future. Here they are:

1. In the next 15 years, 33 million people could be wiped out in less than a year by a pathogen.
2. Africa will become entirely self-sufficient in terms of food production.
3. The lives of the poor will be transformed by mobile banking.
4. In the year 2035, poor countries will no longer exist.
5. By 2030 there will be a clean energy breakthrough that will revolutionize our world.
6. Countless jobs will be lost to automation.
7. Polio could be eliminated worldwide by 2019.

I’m afraid for the first one, but the rest give a lot of hope on humanity, including point 6 since there are many initiatives raising awareness and proposing solutions. It’s nice to see / read future scenarios of progress and more focused on countries and social strata depressed in the present.

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