PC Empowerment and Libraries Online!
Remarks by Bill Gates
Sponsored by the City Of Chicago and the Chicago Public Library
March 19, 1996

MR. GATES: Well, it's a real privilege to be here. This is a fantastic facility, and I can't tell you how excited I am about what I've been hearing about how the Chicago Public Library is playing a role not only in letting young people and adults get access to books, but also now to computer technology.

I was very lucky at a young age to go to a private school who had computers when I was age 13, and the computers weren't nearly as good as what people have today. But, even so, I developed an early fascination. And using that computer as a tool, I gained the self-confidence and interest that really drove me later on to go ahead and start Microsoft. And so ever since then I've been thinking about the kind of empowerment that a PC can provide, and particularly as PCs become better and better, it's clear that what you get from the PC can be quite empowering. It can really make a difference in your life.

Now, the PC has come a long way in the last 20 years. It was just over 20 years ago when I dropped out of school -- and I'm not recommending that to anyone. It was Harvard University, one of the better places to drop out of. And it was at that time that the first low-cost computers were becoming available. It was actually kind of a kit for $360, and you had to put it together. And even once you did that, it really didn't do much for you, but just the challenge of making it work and sort of trying to figure out what it could and couldn't do made it very popular.

Starting in 1981 with IBM's entry and being furthered by Apple products like the Macintosh, which brought a graphical appearance to the machine, and many, many improvements in the speed and storage capacity of the PC, has brought us to where we are today. Now, as we look into the future, the PC will continue to get better.

What is it that people are doing with the PC? Well, they're sitting down and expressing their ideas. They're using the word processor. They're using spreadsheets to study business plans or mathematical analysis. They're even using the computer now for information. When I was growing up, I loved reading The World Book Encyclopedia. Now, it was a little hard to go from topic to topic. It was always a little bit out of date. And so I'm very envious of young people today who, instead of using the print encyclopedia, have another choice, which is to use a CD, a compact disk, that has a lot more information on it, including music and animation. It has quizzes. So if you think you're smart about a topic, you can test out and see if you really are. And as you read about a subject, linking to related articles, simply clicking, and it takes you to another article. And, in fact, in the latest encyclopedia not only do you have the information on the disk, but you can reach out to the Internet and see what everybody's saying about a topic. So let's say it's about medicine. Then you'll see the most up-to-date research and be connected up to other people who are working in that area.

Now, the PC, as it continues to improve, will start to take on a completely new role, and we're really at the start of a new era, an era where we can think of the PC not just as a stand-alone computer, but as a link in an entire communications network. People say this is the Information Age. Well, why do they say that? I believe it's because, as this PC gets easier to use, as it gets cheaper, more and more connected together with great information that's fun to look at, it will become a -- it will foster a communications revolution that will be as important and as impactful as the communications revolutions of the past. That is, I'm comparing the PC to the invention of the printing press, to the arrival of the telephone or the radio or even television.

Now, the personal computer is different in some ways than any of these. Because it's interactive, it is tailored to your individual interests. The topics that you want to learn about are the ones that you can reach out and find out about. Sitting and composing electronic mail and finding things -- it's a lot more active than sitting in front of the TV set. So I think, if we handle it right, the PC creates an incredible opportunity, an opportunity to take the curiosity and capabilities of the population as a whole that are so fantastic and make sure that those are not wasted.

Now, the phenomenon around this is called the Internet. The Internet is an incredible thing. It's very hard to describe how fast this is happening and what it all can mean. You almost nowadays can't pick up a magazine without reading something about the Internet. When you watch TV now, sometimes they have strange strings up there that start "WWW dot this, dot that." Well, those are ways of finding things on the Internet.

Really this will be the mainstream, and it's a gold rush because many companies are trying to position themselves to take leadership. So we have very high levels of investment, very intense competition. Lots and lots of innovation. Now, like any gold rush, the winners are unclear, and it'll take a long time before we really know who's doing the best thing. But it's not too soon for individuals and institutions to start preparing themselves for the change that will take place, to start to get comfortable with these tools and what they can do for them.

I did put in one fairly technical slide here, because it relates to an important point about what is going to slow down the use of the Internet. The ultimate dream of the Internet is that you can connect up to any information or any other person anywhere in the world and send lots and lots of information, send a video image so they can see you and talk to you, let them watch a movie, exchange data and pictures very easily.

Well, the only thing that really holds that back a little bit is the difficulty of the speed of the network. Today we call in using the normal phone lines, and that means the text comes up fairly quickly and pictures can take 5 to 10 seconds. But you really can't do video at all. And so we need to convince communications companies -- phone companies and cable companies primarily -- to invest in better networks, networks with higher speed that will move up and mean that those images will come up immediately and we can start to send video and voice across that network and have very high-quality experiences.

And so every state, and even every country, should think about creating an atmosphere where those investments get made and we can move from the slow speed we have today, which we call narrow band, and move up to mid band and eventually to this broad band that delivers the full capabilities.

When I talk about PC empowerment, what do I mean? Well, a PC is a very general-purpose tool. Some of the software is just games. It's just playing around. But most of it is about solving problems, letting you learn, letting you take something you believe in and advance your cause, letting you express your creativity, letting you have an impact on the world by reaching out and using it as a tool to change things.

And if you go around and talk to people who've mastered the PC, they love it. They're comfortable with it. I admit we have a lot to do to make it easier to learn, to bring the prices down, to have even more software. But we have come a long way, and some of the examples are pretty amazing.

One thing I wanted to do is just show you a quick glimpse of a few things I've set up here on the Internet that'll give you a sense of some of those things that I'm talking about. So we're going to actually switch computer screens, and this is what's called a browser. Actually there's a wonderful competition taking place in browsers. There's a company called Netscape that's got one. Microsoft has one. And you're probably not too surprised I've chosen to use the Microsoft browser here, but pretty much what you'd see would be the same thing no matter how you do this.

So here's where I've come in, and this is a home page that's got some things and some latest information, including, if I just scroll down here, you can see that I picked my favorite topics, and I've got them so I can just click to get to those. And then I can also type in any new topic I want to learn about, and it'll go out and do a search. So I've got TV listings here and lots of new, neat things.

Well, first, let's go ahead and -- well, what have we got here? Let's find out how we can get involved in different causes. How can we be empowered to get involved in, say, the environment or health care, any of those issues? Here's a home page that somebody put together that relates to that, and there's a lot of ways to just send electronic mail to people and find out more from them or call them up. So kids can get involved. They can see easily how to do that.

Another thing that's fairly timely is to take a look at what's going on in the elections. Now, it's hard to stay in touch with politics. Let's say you have a representative and you want to know what have they been voting on, what are they -- do you agree with them or not agree with them? Well, the newspaper just gives you little snippets. Here on the Internet you can get all the information. You can get people's speeches and things. We can see this is a page that NBC put together, and it looks like Illinois is the hot topic right now. It looks like Dole in the Land of Lincoln here, and that was a visit to try and do really well in today's primary here.

And so all the latest information about what people are thinking and what the status is, they're all here, and very, very easy to get at that data.

Another thing that we put up here is the PTA. If you want to know about the PTA, how you can get involved, get some information there about being more involved as a parent with the local school, it's all here off of this PTA page. One of the local favorites is probably The Chicago Tribune. Lot's of good articles in here from the computer columns and ways of making sure you get the most out of your computer as well as get the latest news. We got Dennis Rodman there.

Actually we've got another site we can go to here, which is the Bulls site. It doesn't look like they put Dennis on the home page there. It looks like Michael and Scottie and the coach are getting a little more visibility here. But, of course, you've got a lot of people getting involved. So here Scottie Pippen's been answering e-mail. You can send him a electronic mail. He takes time and answers back, as does Michael. So that's a way of getting them involved with their fans. And a lot of fun to see the latest things there.

One of the local universities, the University of Illinois over at Urbana, Champaign, was one of the creators of this whole concept of the Web. The original browser, which was actually called Mosaic, was written there, and so, of course, they have a great home page and lots of information about courses and scholarships and anything that you might want to be able to know.

This is not just about computers. Let's say you're interested in art and you want to know, you know, how do you get going as an artist, how do you meet other artists, what's going on there. Here's a home page called the Chicago Artists' Coalition, and here you just browse around and see different people involved and send them messages. And so that's for people who want to dive into art.

I nowadays can go to friend who's never used a computer, and actually many who swore they never would use a computer, and ask them what topics are they interested in, and almost no matter what they say, whether it's some area of medicine or history, an author like Jane Austin, I can bring them onto the Internet very quickly, use a search engine, and find things that start to draw them in. And so many of these friends who said they'd stay away from computers now actually have decided that it's a very different thing than they ever expected it would be and they're getting a lot of value out of that.

So the Internet allows anyone to publish. It allows anyone to get more involved. And so that is an incredible revolution. It makes the PC a much better tool than it's ever been before.

Now, there are many aspects to this. One is where you just get on the Web and get, say, the latest movie reviews or get an answer you need for a piece of work you're doing. We call that information at your fingertips. Another part of it is finding other people who've declared their interest, who've joined groups, and are doing neat things. And so it is not just people and computers; it's people connecting with people. And particularly as we get more and more voice communications where you can talk back and forth and eventually pictures as well, that idea of being able to reach out to relatives or to do distance learning or to organize for a social cause, that will become a key way that people think about the machine. It's a lot better than calling up on the phone. It's a lot better than just watching a TV program, because of the way that it engages you.

Now, I get a lot of electronic mail. That's one of the great things about the PC, is you can send mail to anyone. Some of the mail I get is a little bit frivolous. Lots of people want me to help with their homework, and I'm afraid I'm not available to help with that. But then I get a lot of other e-mail that's very important to me. I get feedback on Microsoft products which I can forward along to people and make sure that we incorporate the new ideas in new versions of the products. I also get mail from people who have been using the PC in some amazing ways, i®MDNM¯n ways that really enforce this idea that it is a tool that can change people's lives. And here on stage today we have three people who are great examples of that.

The first one I want to talk about is Aliotia Kampara (sp), who you met here. He's a student at the Mopie and Kanty (sp) Elementary School, and Amy Bennett is the teacher there. And some of the -- this is an excerpt here from a piece of mail that Amy Bennett sent to me about using the PC and how kids like Aliotia have done some amazing things. It says:

"The power of technology have enabled children who've experienced which none of us can imagine to define themselves where they previously could not. The silent objectivity of the computer allows children to reconcile issues surrounding the integration to America. It endowed these immigrant children with the power to present their view of today's world. It is this personal viewpoint which serves as an importation for Americans old and new. Hopefully, the widespread availability of computer technologies will enable Chicagoans to build bridges between peoples, languages and cultures around the world.

And Aliotia, when we met earlier this afternoon, actually gave me the work he had done together with other students that talked about his experiences in Bosnia and the experience of some of those other kids, where they took their reactions, they took some of the photos, and put those down so that they can share with other kids, so the other kids can appreciate their background and have more of an understanding of all the things going on in the world. So I think Aliotia's a great example of someone who's managed to fit the computer in and use it in a great way.

A second example that's very exciting is one that relates to Lauren Yancy (sp), who's up here on stage as well, and she's a student working with Angelee Johns (sp) over at the Chicago Metry (sp) History Education Center. And Angelee sent me a piece of mail that we've got a little piece of here where she asks, "How does an overcrowded inner-city school with minimum resources compete fairly with a school in an affluent community with the best educational tools available?" One way we are trying to address some of these issues is through computer technology. The other piece of the project, the teacher network, is meant to break down the isolation that teachers tell us they experience all the time. The computer makes everyone equal.

Well, there are some very key points here that the computer is enabling. Once a person has that computer, they can reach out to all the same information, and so there's a sense of equality there. Everywhere around the world people are connected up to that same free information. Of course, a lot of it's in English today and it's going to take some time before it's available in other languages. But it is being -- you'd be amazed at how the use, even outside the United States, is growing very rapidly.

The kind of collaboration that can take place includes students working with students, students working with teachers, teachers working with each other, sharing about practices. That's one of the challenges about teaching, is if you're a fantastic teacher, you do a wonderful job in your class, but how do you get those ideas spread around? How do you make sure that as many people benefit from that as possible? Well, now that you can pull your material together electronically, mail that around, share your ideas, have electronic forums for people commenting back and forth -- and they can take any improvements they make in your work and mail it back to you with virtually no cost. Now teachers can build on each other's work and reach out to each other.

Another element here is reaching out to parents. A simple aspect is that parents will find it very easy to know what the homework assignments of their children are. I don't know if that's good or bad. Maybe we can ask the students here about that. But they can be engaged in what their child is learning and help out there. So I think young people will really get the lion's share of benefits, and that's what really drives us to want to be involved in things that allow people to get at computers as young as possible through the school experience.

Another example we have of somebody who's gotten involved with computers and done a great job taking advantage of the opportunities that computers represent is John Rico here. John's created a business. He grew up here in Chicago, and he's put together a business called the Hispanic Computer Company. He's got a lot of his family involved in that. And they actually not only build computers out of the best pieces they can put together; he's also gotten involved in helping to train teachers and install these systems so that's helping to get the new technology out there and show people how it can work. And so his success is really a guiding example to lots of people.

These are just three wonderful examples, and, you know, it really renews my enthusiasm for the work I do, to see the energy that all three of these people have put into their work with computers and how it's fitting in.

Now, there's good news and bad news in the fact that 30 percent of the population has access to a PC. That 30 percent is up quite a bit from, say, three years ago when it would have been more like 15 percent. But the fact that 30 percent has access, that means 70 percent do not, and of course, if you dig into that, the 30 percent who have access today tend to be the more upper middle class, the richer neighborhoods. There's a tendency to have more access in urban areas than in rural areas.

And so computers, being as important as I think they are as a tool, we definitely have an issue of how do we broaden that out? It's almost like the problem we had when books first came along and, of course, took a long time before philanthropists and enlightened political leaders put the resources into the library system to make that something that everybody had access to.

Here with computers we've got some of those same issues, and it's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take voters deciding to put resources into it. It's going to take politicians setting up examples. And it's going to take private companies, thousands of private companies like ours, jumping in to do their part. I think in the last year there's been a huge upswell of this, particularly with the Internet. A lot of the phone companies and cable companies are now saying they will hook up with schools. A lot of them are even coming in and helping out to make that happen. It's almost embarrassing that libraries and schools had been really the least connected places in society, many of them not having really lots of phone lines and certainly not being tied into these rich networks. And now that's being changed.

Now, in terms of providing access, I believe that libraries will end up playing a fundamental role. Schools are a big part of it, but libraries are equally important, because you want kids, even when they're not in school, and certainly adults, to be able to come back and get up to date, even if they can't own their own machine. This is a field where, even if you're on top of things today, two or three years from now the changes will be enough that you really do want to come in and sit down and have a chance to refresh yourself. And maybe even if you have a computer at work, you don't get time to do that in the way you'd like to.

Microsoft has a number of programs where we're trying to reach out. The book that I wrote is called "The Road Ahead." Fortunately, it sold well enough that all the royalties that are being donated for school projects here in the U.S. -- there's several million dollars that have come out of that. We've got some things we're doing with libraries. We have actually 10 that we're kicking off a concept called Libraries Online. We have a close partnership with the Parent-Teacher Association, families being a key element of getting kids involved in technology. We have partnerships with many communications companies, particularly MCI, who's offered for free to connect up schools and provide the communication charges. And lots of special pricing and activities around software for education.

One of the great things about software is we can make it widely available to all the schools, and that's straightforward to do. A great example of that, and one we're excited about, is what we're doing here with the Chicago Public Libraries. The project to provide access to computers, the MIND project, is the one that all of this software will go towards, and so we've taken about a million dollars of software and are providing that to the library. (Applause.)

Now, our part of this is just really one small piece, and my confidence that this is a smart thing to do is really based on meeting the people who are going to drive this project and in seeing their enthusiasm and their commitment to the project. So they are the ones who are going to day by day really make the contribution that will allow all of the kids and adults who get access here to benefit significantly.

So lifelong learning is a big part of this. PCs are not just a tool for a small part of society. Great technology is getting easier and easier. I can't tell you how many older people I've met who've -- (audio break) -- happen, get a few things that they can do well, then not only do they start to use it, but they also get enthused enough that they start to draw their friends in. And so there are wonderful examples of people of all ages who've been drawn in here and are able to reach out to the world because of that.

Now, all of this change is thoroughly scary, and certainly you're going to see a lot of headlines over the next decade: "New Computer Technology Changes Job Market." "New Computer Technology Threatens Privacy." "New Computer Technology Not Available to Everyone That It Should Be." Those are substantial issues and issues that the sooner we get really thinking about them and understanding them, the better that we're going to do.

But, despite those issues, today I want to make sure that the positive aspects, the opportunities that come with this are very, very clear. It is worth the trouble to address those things. There will be millions of new jobs created around this technology. The opportunity to do better training, individualized training, is a wonderful thing. The kind of service you'll get from companies when you can just reach out and find the information easily and just the empowerment through education that comes in here, that's what really makes this such an amazing time and such a great business to be part of.

Now, no one has a crystal ball about how quickly this happen. How quickly will people want to shop through the Internet? I was at a convention just a few miles from here this morning where a lot of retailers were sitting around wondering, are they building too many stores and what should they do? Will you buy groceries that way? Will you buy cars that way? And those experiments are being launched. I think particularly young people who are comfortable with a computer will make it part of that experience.

Certainly in banking the ability to learn about investments and see what your savings are doing and track how you spend money with little effort, that's going to revolutionize that financial world. In government, accountability is the word that's used a lot, but the Internet has a chance to really allow an informed electorate to hold people to that in a major way.

And, of course, we can't forget that a lot of entrepreneurs are going to use this medium to provide entertainment so that people can come in, meet stars, do things with each other. And the image we have here from this demonstration, that's just a glimpse. It's just a glimpse of the breadth, and it's just a glimpse of the depth.

And, in fact, a lot of what you'll be doing in the future, instead of just being a two-dimensional page with lots of text, you'll actually see a three-dimensional image and you'll be able to walk around, so that when you're locked into the virtual library, it will pick the books that might be interesting to you. Or when you walked into that virtual store, it'll load the merchandise that you might be interested in. You can choose how you want to appear to other people in that space. You can choose if you want to be alone in that space. If you run into people, you can talk to them as part of that. And so technology really is going to help make this better and better.

But the most important area and the one that I want to emphasize today is the role of all this technology in allowing for better education. That's one area that the United States is not doing as well as it should, and for the long term we've got to make sure we're investing in that and doing better and better, and so we're pleased to be able to play a small part in that.

Thank you. (Applause.)