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Chapter 3: Paths to the Highway

"Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea." - The Three Metamorphosis, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Written in 1995, "The Road Ahead" was by it's very name a prophecy. A practice in making inferences and expanding our imagination; while educating us about the apparent "magic" of computing and networks. 

Serving multiple functions this book is gripping from page one.

Unlike most academics and futurism fanatics, Bill Gates was fully invested in the subjects he was talking about. And what comes out as the most basic of insights from this book is that we all are affected and must be deeply invested. This is a snowball that is still rolling.

In Chapter 5 "Paths to the Highway", the Gates of 1995 imagines today's semantic systems and the underlying principles that would (and do) support them. He imagines machines talking to each other on "software platforms", devices acting as perfect proxies managing security as well as seamless integration (ATM) and of an information superhighway that focuses on the software flights of the future. 

"Past wars have been won or lost because the most powerful governments on earth didn't have the cryptological power any interested junior high school student with a personal computer can harness today. Soon any child old enough to use a computer will be able to transmit encoded messages that no government on earth will find easy to decipher."
....
"One thing we don't have to worry about is running out of prime numbers, or the prospect of two computers' accidentally using the same numbers as keys. There are far more prime numbers of appropriate length than there are atoms in the universe, so the chance of an accidental duplication is vanishingly small."

The book from page one serves two major purposes:

Firstly, Gates talks about the basic joys of computing and how it is an adventure that sucks you in and gives the deepest of satisfaction. With his congruent vision of computing, Gates paints over the line between Art and the technical details of computing. This opens this vast technical world to the normal reader; bringing it out of the realms of "magic" or "boredom" and putting it right into the hands of the everyday person. 

Secondly, Gates educates; from the basics of binary numbers to the more complex concepts of encryption, Gates uses simple examples to put these fundamental pillars into the readers minds. 


In this chapter (Paths to the Highway), Gates stretches out into the future to poke at the most basic key of software openness and security working hand in hand to serve the world.

"As more and more computers are connected.... everyone will have access to most of the world's information"


Tagore dreamed of a nation where "knowledge is free". Writing with an almost poetic innocence Gates imagines the "how to" to this human dream for the entire world...  

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