August 2005 - Association of Dutch Businessmen

BUSINESS
Bill Gates in Singapore
Annoek
van den Wijngaart
www.twanetwerk.nl
On 1 July, Bill Gates gave a presentation on the
future of computing in Suntec City Convention
Centre as part of his annual Asia Tour. It was Gates’
third visit to the city-state.
The other stages of his 2005 “Tour d’Asie” took
him to Japan and Thailand.
The presentation in Singapore was held for an
audience of seven thousand (!) IT professionals,
industry representatives, students and me……..
I was looking forward to hearing what one of
the world’s wealthiest persons had to say about
the current state of the world, life in general and
the future. Did I expect too much? Of course the
most influential IT personality focussed more on
software and the role it will have in the workplace
and on lifestyle. The event was, after all, organised
by Microsoft.
Gates described the future workplace and
lifestyle as one where wireless networks connect
everyone to each other. Information will be
available always and everywhere. Connection will
be through a variety of appliances, with cellphones
being the key devices. Through 3G networks, more
and more users will be able to access the Internet
for information through their phones.
“With more cellphones in the market,
applications will get richer. It will be possible to
access digital maps everywhere. There will be
e-wallets that users can use to pay bills through
their cellphones. They can also use their cellphone
cameras to take a picture of a receipt and
immediately file that away as part of an expense
report, “ he said.
The technology to make all this happen is
available. It’s just a matter of developing the
right software. Mr Gates expected “software
developments in the next 10 years to be far more
interesting then in the last 30 years.
Mr Gates congratulated Singapore with its
development of the Infocomm sector. He cited the
high penetration of computers in homes, offices and
schools here, the broadband infrastructure and the
quality of people providing e-government services
as the reasons for positive views on Singapore.
Such strong basics in IT are fundamental to the
role that Singapore plays according to Gates. He
further applauded Singapore’s “Intelligent Nation
2015 (iN2015) Master Plan” (www.in2015.sg).
iN2015 outlines the steps to be taken to identify
and map out technology areas that could best
benefit Singapore’s industries, economy and society.
He further advised Singapore to pick key trends
and invest in them. One of the things he gave as
an example was TV over the Internet.
Picking up such trends would allow Singapore
to learn how to provide, implement and invest
money in these technologies.
Another step would be to see that the new
services and solutions that emerge create business
opportunities for local developers involved in these
projects.
Towards the end of the session Gates answered
some of the 8,000 questions that the audience
submitted online.
When asked what the biggest technological
challenge was. His answer was security. Mr Gates
said: “The thing we are investing the most in is
our work on security and when I say security, I mean
very broadly, I mean the issues of privacy control,
issues around spam and identity theft. It would be
a shame if all the empowerment of the Internet
was held back because bad actors were out there
trying to take advantage of the environment.”
Another question focussed on Microsoft’s stand
towards OpenSource. Gates’ brief answer was that
he believes that paid is better than free.
On the question about when computers will
understand human speech, he answered that he
expects voice communication with PCs to become
the norm in three to four years’ time. However,
he mentioned that computer keyboards will not
disappear but only be integrated with speech.
As for the next big thing in IT, Gates said it is
pushing the functions of the Internet to a higher
level such as making online searches faster and
easier. “The internet is so popular today that we
need to just keep evolving. The way we navigate
information, we need to make it far easier to find.
People are very impressed about searches today
but it’s really quite poor compared to what it
should be,” he added.
Sources:
- Bill Gates Grades S’Pore’s IT Level A-/B+.
Straits Times, 2 July 2005.
- Changing the way we work: Wireless Networks.
The Straits Times, 5 July 2005. Digital Life.
- www.channelnewsasia.com
Mr Gates
expected
software
developments
in the next
10 years
to be far
more
interesting
then in
the last
30 years.
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Vol.15 • No. 6 • July/August 2005