Bill Gates: The Metaphysics of the Computer
The Man and His Effects On the Computer Culture
Bill Gates, a founder of MicroSoft and one of the authentic pioneers in the development of computer culture, is apparently an amateur professional, or a professional who is also an amateur—and he maintains this amateur image at his own and even his corporate website. He's made his life over to the furtherance of the computer culture and often discusses what it is like for him after having taken this “step toward the future.” He dropped out of Harvard to enter into this enterprise and he describes his life in computers rather eloquently in a book called THE ROAD AHEAD .
His career also constitutes a grand success story. Although his biography lists having mugshots taken for some adolescent hippie offense along with a few other setbacks in a good progressive life history, he got into computers seriously when a young man, and went rapidly from child prodigy to head of a major corporation specializing in a new approach to communications he himself helped to originate. Alta Vista lists his name as having 4,730,000 results. Gates, who was born in 1955, keeps his own blog, which has the effect of making him part of the computer culture to which he is also a guide, and it has the metaphysical orientation which shows up in his other pursuits. He presently lives near Seattle , Washington and is said to have a net worth of over fifty billion dollars, “one of the richest men there is.”
In a speech made before high school youths, he advocated perseverance and forwardness as well as maintaining a good profile as the key to success in modern business and industry. He seems to describe, both in this speech and in his book, ways to avoid being a cipher, or ways of grooving with it and setting it to your advantage if you must be one. His general social technic is near to nirvana, not unexpectedly if one takes a close look at him; and in fact his personal history is one of transcendent motion toward unlimited goals. 
He describes himself as seeing the present age as a distinctive period of time. “The first time I heard the term ‘Information Age,' I was tantalized,” he says. “I knew about the Iron Age and the Bronze Age…” As part of such an age he is willing to show new ways life could be lived, a Timothy Leary of technology and indicative of a general new way of thinking. His attitude seems to be that the present has what it has, but the future is the direction in which to look.
People are encouraged by his “establishment” to compete with him and identify with him. There is quite a lot of promotional rapping about him on the internet. However, the talk is not all one way. A “Gates is Dead” hoax is being maintained accessibly from Search Engine listings. As with any hoax, verification is being held waiting in the wings, and perpetuators of it threaten to maintain it until it becomes a reality due to mortality.
More positively, there is a Bill Gates Fan Club available by search engine and it is not overly elaborate.
He travels as a public speaker, addressing information technologists all over the world, audiences at software and digital entertainment events, and colleges, preserving his speeches for the sake of research.
Computer executives aren't usually personalities, and Gates is sometimes standing out front alone. Larry Ellison of Oracle has sometimes appeared in interviews and publicity and is sometimes described as a god, sometimes as a tyrant. Compared to Gates, he seems practical and Machiavellian. Few others have made themselves or been made publicly recognizable, however, and it is refreshing to be able to get a close look at one. Computers are presently dominating the public mentality and it is handy to the user to be able to have some impression of those who have set it all up.
We thank Bill Gates for being so visible.
Gates' house on Lake Washington