Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, 10: Internet will be a road to many places
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This is an exciting time in the world of computers and information. It is a beginning. New things are coming, and new jobs are coming with them.
I hope for great things from the future, but I worry a little, too. Workers will have to learn these new jobs. Countries will become nearer together, and this will change the way we feel about neighboring countries. There will be new problems, but today we can only guess what they will be.
Sometimes, with everything changing, it seems that the world will be completely different from one day to the next. It won’t. But we have to be ready for some changes.
For most people the problem is “Where will my place be in all this?” They worry about new jobs and their children’s jobs. These are serious questions. Some jobs will disappear. But these are the same questions I heard when the personal computer arrived in the work-place, and nothing terrible happened then.
Each time a job disappears, the worker who has that job is free to do something new. This means people do more work, and that is good for everyone.
Before we had machines, most people lived or worked on farms. Today, only a few people in the United States do this work. The children and the grandchildren of farmers didn’t stop working; they just found new jobs. In 1990, more than half the 501 different jobs you could have were jobs that weren’t there in 1940.
Computers frighten almost everyone (everyone but children) before they learn to use them. When people spend more time with computers, they understand them better. You can start by playing computer games or doing other simple things. Once you start using them, I think you’ll like them.
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