Paul Allen: The Other Face of Microsoft
Two kids become friends over their shared fascination with computers. Then they start their first company together. Less than a decade later, that same company is the first giant of the modern computer age. And while we know a great deal about one of those kids, who for a long time was the richest man on the planet, the story of the other is far less familiar. None other than the computer specialist Paul Allen, the “godfather” of Microsoft, turned out to be the owner of the most expensive private art collection ever sold. And this happened in November 2022, four years after he left this world. A connoisseur of art, a man smitten with sports, a huge donor to scientific research. He is also the rich man who awakened the modern interest in spaceflight. At just 29 he learned that he had a deadly illness, and he decided to live the rest of his life the way he had always dreamed. There is a lot we can learn from the story and the worldview of this unconventional figure. And, even more, we can ask ourselves what today’s tech world would look like if its other leaders shared his outlook.
02Bill Gates and the Philosopher's Stone
Can you picture the founder of Microsoft as a thief of time? How did climbing high mountain peaks shape his biggest successes in the software world? Why was the dream of beating his grandmother at cards among the ideas that made him the richest man on the planet? Hardly anyone would accuse Bill Gates of being a brilliant storyteller, yet the stories told by one of the most important people of our time (like him or not) are certainly impressive. I chose eight of them to tell you…
03What's in Apple's Name? The Stories Behind the Web's Biggest Brands
Are Java and JavaScript cousins, and if they have nothing in common… why do they have such similar names? Why did Apple pick something as overused as the apple for its name and symbol? What on earth is… Adobe? Or Google? Does Lenovo have anything to do with Lenin? “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” says Juliet, as quoted by Shakespeare. And would what we call Apple or Amazon smell as sweet under another name? We can only guess. But behind the names of the online world's biggest players there are sometimes funny stories. In the lines that follow, we'll run quickly through some of the most instructive and unexpected ones.
04The Dreamer Who Should Have Been Bill Gates
“It was not a happy moment when I realized that computers were being built to make money, not to make minds,” says Gary Kildall. He wrote the first operating system for personal computers. And, according to legend, he let slip the golden contract with IBM that could have put him at the top of the software world—the place Bill Gates and Microsoft won instead. He is, without a doubt, a legend of the computer age. He died at just 52, but left an enormous mark on computer history.
