2023-05-09 01:15:19
Bill Gates has spent decades imagining how technology will transform people’s lives over the years. The tycoon, co-founder of Microsoft, was key to the start of the democratization of the Internet during the 1990s. At that time, many companies were already beginning to look for ways to do business on the incipient Internet thanks to electronic business.
In the late 1990s, Gates, who is currently particularly focused on philanthropic work, was clear that the Internet would eventually become available on devices other than computers. So he made it clear in a report prepared in 1997 in which he explained how he hoped that the arrival of this technology would transform televisions. Basically, he predicted the arrival of the Smart TV two decades in advance.
“Our vision has now taken a leap from ‘connected PC to connected TV’, this is the integration of the intelligence and interactivity of the computer with the sound and video of television,” said Bill Gates. “This mutation will accelerate as TV goes digital. Making this vision a reality depends on the physical infrastructure, on the high-speed connections that will unite these devices,” the tycoon continued.
In 1997, Gates and Microsoft made several investments with the aim that televisions began to incorporate Windows. The tycoon hoped that this device would become the control center of the user’s smart home in the future.
Thanks to the inclusion of Windows in televisions, developers could, for example, create “a customized guide for television shows or applications that allow you to view web pages and see email on television.” The user could also use this device to “control the air conditioning system, the lighting system of the family home, or even connect a digital camera to present photos or send them by email over the Internet.”
Gates’ vision of the televisions of the future, indeed, is very reminiscent of the current Smart TVs that more and more users have at home: devices with which it is possible to surf the Internet and consume all kinds of multimedia content. Undoubtedly, the experience of using this technology at the end of the nineties and beginning of the century would have been very different and complicated. Mainly, due to the limitations of the network and devices.
However, that doesn’t mean Microsoft didn’t try. In 1997 he took control of the company WebTVwith which he launched a kit consisting of a box, a keyboard and a remote control that had little success and ended up being discontinued in 2013.
In 2007 he returned to the charge
In 2007, during a conference in Davos, Gates returned to the charge and predicted the disappearance of traditional television in just five years. “In the coming years, more and more viewers will want to enjoy the options offered by video on the Web and will abandon the conventional television broadcasts of programs and ads that interrupt them,” said the magnate at the time.
“Some things, like the elections or the Olympics, really show how terrible television is. You have to wait for the guy on the screen to talk about what you’re interested in, or you miss the event and want to go back to watch it. The presentation of these things on the Internet is immensely superior, “concluded the co-founder of Microsoft.
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