revenue<\/a>, boasts a $3.1 trillion market value, and accounts for most of Gates\u2019 $100 billion personal fortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cSource Code\u201d ends with Gates\u2019s drive back to Seattle in 1979, meaning it doesn\u2019t touch upon his 1994 marriage to Melinda French, nor their 2021 divorce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am being reflective, which is not my normal mode, but it\u2019s kind of time,\u201d Gates said during an interview about the book with The Associated Press. \u201cAs we went back and got teacher\u2019s comments or people I worked with at Harvard, it was fascinating. I had confused myself into thinking I got straight A\u2019s in ninth grade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That might not sound like much of a revelation, but it was a surprise to the cerebral Gates, who paints himself in the book as a \u201cbratty smartass\u201d prone to dismissively sneering, \u201cThat\u2019s the stupidest thing I ever heard,\u201d about remarks that seemed nonsensical to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gate\u2019s self-portrait is that of a nerd nicknamed \u201cTrey\u201d by his card-playing grandmother because he was the third male on this father\u2019s side of the family to be named Bill. He was a pipsqueak who had difficulty making friends and preferred living in his own head before he discovered computers, which became like slot machines that rewarded him for writing elegant lines of code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he did talk, the young Gates rocked back and forth like a metronome setting a rhythm for his brain \u2014 a habit that surfaced during parts of his 45-minute interview with the AP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a little weird because it was hard to direct my attention,\u201d Gates recalled during the interview. \u201cI had one year in school where they said, \u2018Oh we should put you ahead a couple grades.\u2019 And then another time, they said, \u2018No, we should hold you back.\u2019 And it\u2019s like, \u2018Well make up your mind.\u2019 They were a little confounded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although he didn\u2019t realize it as a boy, Gates has no doubt he was and still is neurodivergent who channeled that anomaly into learning to program computers at the right time in the right place with the patient support of his late parents (the book is dedicated to them, along with his sister, Kristi and Libby).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I was an adult that there was this idea that there are kids that have this kind of unique ability to concentrate but less social skills. I certainly would be included in that,\u201d Gates said. \u201cI encourage people who have strengths and deficits to kind of map their ambition onto something that plays to their strengths. Being able to think just about programming and how you do it better ended up being invaluable for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gates also had the advantage of growing up in a family that could afford to pay for him to attend a private high school in Seattle. Still, that privilege didn\u2019t insulate him from the trauma he experienced when his best friend, Kent Evans, died in a mountain climbing accident in May 1972 \u2014 a year before they were going to graduate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evans\u2019 death occurred while he and Gates were preparing to spend much of the summer working on a program for their school, but what hurt far more was the loss of someone who understood him and helped give him a sense of purpose for the first time in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had no notion of a friend just being gone. It was the only negative thing in my childhood,\u201d Gates said. \u201cIt shapes you, that someone can just disappear \u2014 somebody you loved and would have done things with. He would have been part of whatever I ended up going on to do. I give Kent credit, along with Paul (Allen), for setting the direction that I ended up going down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evans\u2019 death provided the impetus for Gates to reconnect with Allen, who was already attending college, to help him with his programming projects. Allen, three years older than Gates and a passionate fan of legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, did more than just help with the coding. He also offered Gates some LSD in an attempt to lure his partner down a more psychedelic path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gates rebuffed Allen at first but decided to drop acid with a group of high school friends shortly before his 1973 graduation, according to the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t a pleasant experience, a reaction that Gates thought might have been related to the dental surgery he underwent the day after his LSD trip. He tried LSD again with Allen in October 1974 while they were watching an episode of the old \u201cKung Fu\u201d series on TV, and decided he would be better off without psychedelic drugs even though Apple co-founder Steve Jobs contended Microsoft would have created better products had Gates taken more acid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought maybe I\u2019d seem cool if I took it, but that didn\u2019t happen,\u201d Gates said during the interview. \u201cI would say Steve was definitely more hip than I was. He took a lot more acid than I did. He had a sense of style. I had some charisma in terms of motivating engineers and saying this great thing (with personal computers) would happen, but Steve had natural speaking and charisma capabilities, even beyond mine. So I always envied him for the things he did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gates\u2019 mind is now being blown by the recent advances in artificial intelligence \u2014 a technology being planted into Microsoft\u2019s software as part of its partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I finally see ChatGPT-4, where the OpenAI guys show me a very early version, I am just blown away completely,\u201d Gates said. He views AI as an \u201camazing and scary\u201d technology that should be rigorously monitored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou should be nervous. We have to acknowledge that AI is almost uniquely dangerous because it\u2019s unbounded in terms of how good it will get and it\u2019s happening within a generation,\u201d Gates said. \u201cHopefully, the politicians and the technologists will share with each other, and we can shape this thing. We better get on top of that now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If nothing else, Gates is hoping \u201cSource Code\u201d will help people see a more human side of him, even if he might never been seen as the cultural tastemaker that Jobs was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say I was completely uncool,\u201d Gates said. \u201cBut once I got going on Microsoft, I was willing to be pretty monomaniacal. Even people I competed with found it very intimidating how focused I was. I really didn\u2019t goof off in my 20s because my whole thing was having Microsoft move at full speed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps Gates will delve deeper into the monomania that made him so rich, famous and sometimes reviled in the next book about his life \u2014 an installment that he says won\u2019t be done until sometime in 2027, at the earliest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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