Bricks and Dots with Chris Horn
Ten Visionaries of the 90's
Window on the World
Issue 3
The
Top Two...
10 Visionaries of the 90’s
By Hal Hart
CNET’s picks as the top two idea men who most impacted computing in the 90’s and likely well into the next century:
- 2 William H. Gates III: “The despot”? Cofounder and chairman of Microshoft You may not like him or his company's strong-arm tactics. You may gripe about his lack of originality, or point out the flaws in Microsoft's most popular products. So what? Bill Gates is unquestionably one of the most powerful, important, and influential forces in technology in the 1990s. We're not just talking about his sudden ubiquity in pop culture. The simple fact is that many of the decade's major advances in computing have been spurred by Microsoft...or in reaction to Microsoft.
- 1 Tim Berners-Lee: The true webmaster — he created the World Wide Web! PalmPilots, cheap PCs, and Tamagotchis notwithstanding, the single most important contribution to computing in the 1990s was the World Wide Web. The Web — a way of organizing information on the Internet that mimics neural connections — has revolutionized the way we access information, the way we communicate with one another, the way we research and buy products. It's like the invention of the printing press, the telephone, and the 24-hour store rolled into one. And it all came about through the vision of Tim Berners-Lee.
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