Good book - and mine came signed :)
Written in 1996, however, I am surprised that most of the content in the book can come true nowadays. For example, videoconferencing, e-mail, e-shopping, e-banking, etc. This book is interesting that we can understand more how computer developed and how it is applied widely in the world nowadays.
The content of this book is about how computer developed and what the trend of the information age is. I got the main point from the book is that ¡§How technology benefits our lives?¡¨ We can divide what Bill Gates has mentioned about the benefits of technology in our lives into four aspects: Individual, education, business, and society. Actually, the evolution of computer and the application of e-mail, ICQ, Intranet, etc affected our communication pattern today. Now, we can use the above methods to communicate with anyone all over the world that overcome our physical separation. Therefore, the world today become smaller and people become more aware of what happens outside the world. And this interactive network can be applied in the above four aspects (Individual, education, business, and society) that improve our standard of living.
For individual, the Internet is widely used that enhance socialization among people. On-line game, ICQ, and newsgroup, etc provides more kinds of entertainment for us that can help people to reduce pressure and train our intelligence.
For education, CD-ROM, World Wide Web, Intranet, e-mail, and educational software, etc can help people to manage information to support thinking and learning, and to assist many education works. For example, students can submit assignments and download academic notes through the campus Intranet and it enables students to keep in touch with other classmates and teachers.
For business, e-mail, Microsoft Office, Web page, videoconferencing, software for scheduling, etc can help to streamline the operation in business internally and externally. And new forms of business begin to emerge, which are e-shopping, e-banking and on-line advertising that help to save operation cost and provide new kinds of business for companies.
For society, Internet, e-mail, and ICQ, etc help to enhance information exchange and enhance culture exchange, and then enhance our standard of living since technology enables people to work efficiently so that it increases our leisure time with better lives.
This book helps me to understand more about how the evolution of technology can bring us so large and good impacts to our world. I am surprising that what Bill Gates said in 1996 can become reality in 2003. We can enjoy the benefits nowadays from the achievement of the people long times ago. Moreover, I learnt how to think and criticize an issue from different angles so that I can analyze an issue in a more objective ways. We can learn this thinking skill from Bill Gates since this book contains many critical thinking by Bill Gates and how he criticized an issue into different angles objectively. This skill is very important for me and it is very useful for my future career.
This book is a valuable book that recorded the evolution of computer and how technology benefits our world. Therefore, I believe that people can get many insights in education and business world from this book. I hope that all the readers can also enjoy reading this book and learning how to think and criticize an issue more objectively.Read full review
