So the Titans now sleep
Hidden in the news Friday was a small press release from Microsoft with the title "Microsoft Announces Change to Its Board of Directors". Quietly, amid much bigger news, was the announcement that Bill Gates is resigning from the Microsoft Board of Directors.
I would guess that this was much as Gates would want it. He would rather focus any of his press awareness on the causes his foundation works on than some private business shuffling. But for me, this feels like the end of an era. The titans of the industry that raised me have nearly all passed from involvement in the great corporations they created and ran. As far as I can find, only Larry Ellison remains involved in his tech endeavor, being the chairman of Oracle and the CTO.
There are many people that I look up to that are forever involved in their great world-changing work. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is still thinking, designing and building the future of the internet. Vint Cerf was working with NASA on very-long-delay networking last I knew. Shafi Goldwasser and Leonard Adleman are teaching a new generation of hackers and thinkers about cryptography. I think James Gosling is still trying to destroy the world with Java over at Amazon.
However, these aren't Titans of Industry in the classic Americana way. Larry is the last of a breed that I grew up revering the audacity of their businesses and their work. Steve Jobs famously wanted to leave a dent on the universe when he exited it, and the company he was the face and leader of surely did so. Arguably as much as any humans have ever changed the way we live.
Gates though, Bill Gates is a personally special Titan. Where Steve Jobs wanted to perfect computing, Bill Gates wanted to commoditize it. I can't say that either one of them was more right than the other, but in the 1980's I watched computers go from multi-thousand dollar luxury goods to $400 or $500 used machines I sold via newspaper classified ads to families that couldn't afford new machines. The Gates approach helped me make my first computer business possible. It never occurred to me that someone not even a teenager could start an entrepreneurial endeavor. His inspiration and writing made me think anything was possible. The fact that this was all happening in my backyard, a town not far from my home in Washington, made it very real.
Just the stuff for a young kid to really absorb.
I have spent a lot of time talking to people or writing about how computers and technology have effected me. I was so young when I started writing code that computers are intertwined into my identity. I have lived a life of privilege and opportunity because of the skills I learned growing up inside these machines. Bill and Melinda Gates, Paul Allen, Larry Page, Steve Jobs and Wozniak, John Walker, Scott Cook & Tom Proulx, Mitch Kapor, Ray Noorda and even John McAfee are all names that have a special place in my childhood zeitgeist. These are people that took computers from a good idea to an every day reality.
Many of these people long ago retired, or passed away or otherwise moved on to other things. Larry Page is hanging in there, just as the setting sun seems to grip the edge of the horizon for as long as possible. Bill Gates though, Mr Gates is the big one. Seeing the news that he is leaving the board feels like the end of an epoch.
So the Titans now sleep, and the new gods have dominion of the world they built.