A new era in publishing history dawned on March 24 with the publication of Business @ the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System, the second book by best-selling author Bill Gates (assuming you count all those editions of The Road Ahead as the first). Available simultaneously in hardcover and in both abridged and unabridged audio cassette editions, the new volume offers Gates’ 12-step program for companies wanting to do business in the next millennium.
One day after its publication, it was already number one in internet bookstore Amazon.com’s sales rating chart, knocking George Stephanopoulos from the top slot. By then, over 20 enthusiastic readers had promptly volunteered their thoughts on the 400-page book. Predictably, those reviews ranged from ecstatic (Fantastic! A truly enlightening book!) to apoplectic (Bill will be 1st against the wall when the revolution comes!). The more sober Amazon.com reviewer, however, pointed out that with excerpts in Time magazine, a dedicated web site, and an all-out media assault [it is] difficult to see the book as anything but a finely tuned marketing campaign for the forthcoming versions of Windows NT and MS Office. He might have added that the book’s subtitle even includes Microsoft’s recently coined digital nervous system product slogan, and that Gates received help with the writing from Collins Hemingway, director of executive communications at Microsoft. Gates was at book signing sessions in New York on the day of publication (Wednesday) and by today (Friday) he was scheduled to attend similar sessions in London.
And after the book and cassette come the films. A new made-for- cable movie is due to be aired in the US on the TNT channel called Pirates of Silicon Valley and will re-tell the story of the early days of Gates and Apple Computer Inc co-founder Steve Jobs. Gates will be played by Anthony Michael Hall, but Jobs, played by ER actor and Jobs lookalike Noah Wyle, is the main character. I concentrated on the personal elements – the ambition, the greed, the envy, the cunning, Wyle told the AP newswire, show business has got nothing on the computer world. If Gates is unhappy that he isn’t the center of attention in Pirates he has only to wait for the forthcoming Paramount Pictures movie called 20 Billion, described as a picture about a rich software executive whose fortune crumbles.
