View source for The Road Ahead (Gates book)

{{Short description|1995 book by Bill Gates}}
{{Infobox book
| name          = The Road Ahead
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         = The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book).jpg
| author        = Bill Gates, with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson
| illustrator   =
| cover_artist  = Laurie Rippon (jacket design); [[Annie Leibovitz]] (photograph)
| country       = United States
| language      = English
| series        =
| subject       = [[Information technology]], [[information superhighway]], [[computer network]]s, [[telecommunications]]<ref>[[Library of Congress]] [[Cataloging in Publication]] data</ref>
| genre         = [[Nonfiction]]
| publisher     = [[Viking Penguin]]
| pub_date      = 
{{plainlist|
* November 24, 1995<ref name="nyt95"/> 
* October 1996 ("Completely revised and up-to-date.")
}}
| media_type    = [[Hardback]] with companion [[CD-ROM]]
| pages         = 286
| isbn          = 978-0-670-77289-6
| oclc          = 33281938
| preceded_by   =
| followed_by   = [[Business @ the Speed of Thought]]
| website        = https://archive.org/details/roadahead00gate/mode/2up
}}
{{Bill Gates series}}
'''''The Road Ahead''''' is a book written by [[Bill Gates]], co-founder and former [[CEO]] of [[Microsoft]]; [[Nathan Myhrvold]], Microsoft executive; and former Microsoft vice president [[Peter Rinearson]]. Published in November 1995, then substantially revised about a year later, ''The Road Ahead'' summarized the implications of the [[Digital Revolution|personal computing revolution]] and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global [[information superhighway]].

Gates received a $2.5-million advance for his book and money from subsidiary rights sales;<ref name="nyt95"/> all his proceeds were donated to "encourage the use of technology in education administered through the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education,"<ref name="firstEd"/> a foundation created by the [[National Education Association]].<ref>{{cite web| url= http://lsc-net.terc.edu/do.cfm/resource/8025/show/use_set-ow_reform |title= National Foundation for the Improvement of Education (NFIE)| date= 1997-12-16| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20030613214622/http://lsc-net.terc.edu/do.cfm/resource/8025/show/use_set-ow_reform | archive-date= 2003-06-13| access-date=2014-09-15}}</ref>

==Content differences between hardback and trade editions==
The [[Hardcover|hardback edition]] saw the [[Internet]] as one of the "important precursors of the information highway...suggestive of [its] future" (p.&nbsp;89);<ref name="firstEd">{{cite book |last=Gates |first=Bill |author2=Nathan Myhrvold |author2-link=Nathan Myhrvold |author3=Peter Rinearson |title=The Road Ahead |edition=1st |publisher=[[Viking Penguin]] |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-670-77289-6 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/roadahead00gate }}</ref> he noted that the "popularity of the Internet is the most important single development in the world of computing since the [[IBM PC]] was introduced in 1981"<ref name="firstEd"/> (p.&nbsp;91) but "today's Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway": the information highway he envisioned would be as different from the Internet as the [[Oregon Trail]] was to [[Interstate 84 (west)|Interstate 84]].<ref name="firstEd"/> (p.&nbsp;95)

The revised edition was published in October 1996 as a [[paperback|trade paperback]],<ref name="revisedEd">{{cite book |last=Gates |first=Bill |author2=Nathan Myhrvold |author2-link=Nathan Myhrvold |author3=Peter Rinearson |title=The Road Ahead |edition=revised |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |date=1996-11-01 |isbn=978-0-14-026040-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/roadahead00gate_1 }}</ref> with the [[subtitle (titling)|subtitle]] "Completely revised and up-to-date.".{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Both editions came with a CD-ROM that contained the text of the book and supplemental information. The hardback was published by Viking, and the paperback by Penguin, an affiliate of Viking. Numerous publishers around the world produced translated versions of the book.

==Collaborators==
One of Gates' coauthors, [[Nathan Myhrvold]], was a computer scientist and Microsoft vice president who for a time oversaw Microsoft's research efforts and later co-founded [[Intellectual Ventures]], an intellectual property company. The other co-author, [[Peter Rinearson]], was a [[Pulitzer Prize]] winner and entrepreneur who later founded and sold an Internet company and became a Microsoft vice president.

==Quotes==
* "Anyone expecting an autobiography or a treatise on what it's like to have been as lucky as I have been will be disappointed."<ref name="firstEd"/> (p. xiii)
* "Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things."<ref name="firstEd"/> (p.&nbsp;2)
* "Corporations will redesign their nervous systems to rely on the networks that reach every member of the organization and beyond into the world of suppliers, consultants and customers." (1996: 153)
* "We'll find ourselves in a new world of friction, overhead capitalism, in which market information will be plentiful and transaction costs low. It will be a shopper's heaven" (1996: 181).
* "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."<ref name="firstEd" /> (p.&nbsp;265)

==Publicity==
{{rquote|right|This is as big as it gets in nonfiction for us.  It's pretty exciting.|Paul Slovak, vice president of publicity for Viking<ref name="nyt95"/>}}
The publisher's $1 million promotional budget was one of its largest ever, rivaling that given to ''[[My American Journey]]'', an autobiography of Gen. [[Colin Powell]] also released at the time.<ref name="nyt95">{{cite news| url= https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/20/business/media-publishing-viking-rolls-out-the-big-guns-to-promote-gates-s-book.html | title= Viking rolls out the big guns to promote Gates's book| newspaper=[[The New York Times]] | date=November 20, 1995| access-date=2009-10-27 | first=Mary B. W. | last=Tabor}}</ref>  The first excerpts from the book were published on November 19 by ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' in the United Kingdom (only a few months after Microsoft, in a [[Windows 95]] promotion, "paid for an entire daily press run of ''The Times'' and gave it away to readers") and in the November 27th, edition of ''[[Newsweek]]''.<ref name="nyt95"/>  Accompanying the publicity was a "one-day lay down", a "very expensive marketing technique" where a book is placed on sale in multiple countries on the same day (November 24, in this case), giving the book "an almost sure shot at the No. 1 spot on best-seller lists."<ref name="nyt95"/>  ''The Road Ahead'' got a first printing  of 850,000 books in North America and several hundred thousand overseas.<ref name="nyt95"/>

It was early enough in the [[history of the World Wide Web]] that ''The New York Times'' thought it newsworthy to report that Gates was going to "conduct [[on-line forum]]s to promote the book" and  Penguin had created a "Bill Gates web site on the Internet (http://www.penguin.com/roadahead), which will feature information and an audio clip about the book, printed excerpts and quotes from reviews, as well as information about the CD-ROM."<ref name="nyt95"/>

Gates publicized the book's release during a five-day tour of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, London and Paris,<ref name="nyt95"/> which included appearances on ''[[Nightline (U.S. news program)|Nightline]]'', ''[[Talking with David Frost]]'', ''[[Today (NBC program)|The Today Show]]'', the ''[[Late Show with David Letterman]]'', [[MTV]], ''[[Fresh Air]]'', and ''[[The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer]]''<ref name="nyt95"/><ref name="seattle95"/>

==Reception==
''The Road Ahead'' occupied the top spot on ''The New York Times''' bestseller list for over seven weeks in late 1995 and early 1996, and sold 2.5 million copies.{{citation needed|date=October 2009}}

A reviewer at ''[[The Seattle Times]]'' (and coauthor of ''Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America'', a 1993 biography of Gates), called Gates' coverage of the Internet "weakest of all" the topics Gates covered, saying the "[[World Wide Web]] receives just four index citations and is treated as a functional appendage of the Internet (rather than its driving force), and both come off as a subset of the Information Highway, a term Gates uses with abandon."<ref name="seattle95">{{cite news| title='Road Ahead': Gates And Our PC Future| newspaper= [[The Seattle Times]] | url= https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19951122/2153890/road-ahead-gates-and-our-pc-future | date= November 22, 1995 | author=Paul Andrews | access-date=2009-10-27}}</ref>

''The New York Times'' review called the book "bland and tepid" and reading "as if it had been vetted by a committee of Microsoft executives"; it is "little more than a positioning document, sold in book form with accompanying CD-ROM and designed mainly to advance the interests of the [[Microsoft Corporation]]."<ref name="nytbook95">{{cite news| title= The Microsoft Word | url= https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/specials/gates-road.html | author= Joseph Nocera | author-link= Joseph Nocera | date= December 24, 1995 | access-date=2009-10-27 | work=The New York Times}}</ref>  It also said that Gates "has been caught flat-footed by [the Internet's] sudden emergence" and saying the book is "part of Mr. Gates's extensive effort to force his way back into the game before it's too late."<ref name="nytbook95"/>

''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, in a December 1995 article about Gates in general rather than his book, said:<ref>{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,983882,00.html | archive-url=https://archive.today/20120914154615/http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,983882,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=September 14, 2012 | title= Headliners: Bill Gates| date=December 25, 1995 | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]| access-date=2009-10-27}}</ref>
<blockquote>Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, [[Usenet]] and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central [[operating system]] that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open&mdash;that is to say, nonproprietary&mdash;standards, none of which were set by Microsoft. Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.</blockquote>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
{{cite book |last1=Gates |first1=Bill |year=1996 |title=<small>THE ROAD AHEAD</small> |url=https://archive.org/details/roadahead00gate_1 |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |publication-date=1996 |isbn=0670772895 |quote=What is the information highway? How will the new technology change our lives? Do I have to learn to use a computer? Will my job become obsolete? Welcome to The Road Ahead....}}

{{cite web
| url = https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/The-Road-Ahead-after-25-years
| title = The Road Ahead after 25 years The predictions I got right and wrong in my first book.
|author= Bill Gates
|date= November 24, 2020
| work =www.gatesnotes.com
|archive-url=https://archive.today/20210523003635/https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/The-Road-Ahead-after-25-years
|archive-date=23 May 2021
| access-date = May 23, 2021}}

{{cite web
| url =https://nieman.harvard.edu/authors/peter-rinearson/ 
| title = <small>PETER RINEARSON</small>
| work =[[Nieman Foundation]], [[Harvard University]]
|archive-url=https://archive.today/20210524004018/https://nieman.harvard.edu/authors/peter-rinearson/
|archive-date=May 24, 2021
| access-date = May 24, 2021}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite web| url=https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/road_ahead_billgates/1/ | title='The Road Ahead' 10 years on | publisher=bit-tech.net | author=Geoff Richards | date=8 February 2006 | access-date=7 October 2017}}

{{Bill Gates}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Road Ahead, The}}
[[Category:1995 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Works by Bill Gates]]
[[Category:Books by computer and internet entrepreneurs]]