你有一封來自比爾·蓋茨的未讀郵件

咱們爲「今日熊推」增長了一個推薦「好玩有趣有想法」外語文章的新系列。固然，咱們會提早準備一些導讀和介紹的內容。

表明 「22 世紀」工做通訊模式的 BearyChat，這個系列的第一期應該推薦這篇 22 年前 Bill Gates 關於電子郵件這種當時的前衛通訊手段的文章。

這篇內容發表於 1994 年，讀起來十足的「年代感」，感覺一下在那個年代新的工做通訊工具是如何 amazing~

Email from Bill 一封來自比爾·蓋茨的郵件

像亨利·福特主宰了汽車行業同樣，微軟的董事長比爾·蓋茨主導着現代計算機行業。現在，新興技術即將把咱們全部人推向一條信息高速公路，蓋茨又一次處在一個面向將來的特殊的位置。

電子郵件容許咱們在本身的電腦上打好一段文字，經過電話線路傳輸到另外一臺電腦，由此我想到，也許我能夠經過這樣的方式，發一封郵件給比爾蓋茨和他交流。

我第一次發了一封郵件問他，做爲一種通信方式，你認爲 email 有什麼特別之處嗎？不久，我收到了他的回覆。

他的答覆是，email 有不少理由成爲一個獨特的通訊工具，可是 email 不是一個直接交流的替代品。就像不多有人知道他的家庭電話，可他的 email 地址卻廣爲人知。他認爲 email 保證了溝通的專注性，也很是好的保證了溝通內容的安全性，還能夠有話直說不須要藉助寒暄打破尷尬。

我問過他將來對他來講是什麼樣的，問過他怎麼看待「電視是麻醉人的鴉片」這句話，問什麼是激勵他的源泉，甚至詢問他和時代華納以及 T.C.I. 的聯盟是否變得不穩固了。

Email 的確讓更多的事成爲了可能，咱們能和看起遠不可及的人交換思想，就好像我和比爾·蓋茨同樣。

原文連接 做者：JOHN SEABROOK

一些摘錄的郵件片斷：

這是 Bill 回覆給做者的第一封郵件：

E-mail is a unique communication vehicle for a lot of reasons. However email is not a substitute for direct interaction . . .
There are people who I have corresponded with on email for months before actually meeting them—people at work and otherwise. If someone isn’t saying something of interest its easier to not respond to their mail than it is not to answer the phone. In fact I give out my home phone number to almost no one but my email address is known very broadly. I am the only person who reads my email so no one has to worry about embarrassing themselves or going around people when they send a message. Our email is completely secure. . . .
Email helps out with other types of communication. It allows you to exchange a lot of information in advance of a meeting and make the meeting far far more valuable. . . .
Email is not a good way to get mad at someone since you can’t interact. You can send friendly messages very easily since those are harder to misinterpret.

回答了「將來對於他來講是什麼樣的」：

Feelings are pretty personal. I love coming up with new ideas or seeing in advance what is going to count and then making it happen. I love working with smart people. . . .Our business is very very competitive—one or two false moves and you can fall behind in a way that would wipe you out. Market share does not give you the right to relax. IBM is the best example of this. This is very scary but also makes it very interesting.
The digital revolution is all about facilitation—creating tools to make things easy. When I was a kid I was a lot more curious than I am today—perhaps I have lost less curiosity than the average adult but if I had had the information tools we are building today I would know a lot more and not have given up learning some things.
These tools will be really cool. Say today you want to meet someone with similar interests to talk or take a trip together or whatever? Its hard and somewhat random. Say you want to make sure you pick a good doctor or read a good book? We can make all of these things work so well—its empowering stuff.
Enough for now.

怎麼看待「電視是麻醉人的鴉片」這句話:

Interactive TV is probably a really bad name for the in-home device connected to the information highway.
Lets say I am sitting at home wondering about some new drug that was prescribed to me. Or wanting to ask a question to my children’s teacher. Or curious about my social security status. Or wondering about crime in my neighborhood. Or wanting to exchange information with other people thinking about visiting Tanzania. Or wondering if the new lawn mower I want to buy works well and if its a good price. Or I want to ask people who read a book what they thought of it before I take my time reading it. In all of these cases being able to reach out and communicate by using a messaging or bulletin board type system lets me do something I could never do before. Assume that the infrastructure and device to do this is easy to use and it was funded by the cable or phone company primarily because I like to watch movies and video-conference with my relatives.
All of the above is about how adults will use the system. Kids will use it in ways we can’t even imagine.
The opportunity for people to reach out and share is amazing. This doesn’t mean you will spend more time inside! It means you will use your time more effectively and get to do the things you like more than in the past as well as doing new things. If you like to get outside you will find out a lot more about the places that are not crowded and find good companions to go with.
The bottom line is that 2 way communication is a very different beast than 1 way communication. In some ways a phone that has an unbelievable directory, lets you talk or send messages to lots of people, and works with text and pictures is a better analogy than TV. The phone did change the world by making it a smaller place. This will be even more dramatic. There will be some secondary effects that people worry about but they won’t be the same as TV. We are involved in creating a new media but it is not up to us to be the censors or referees of this media—it is up to public policy to make those decisions.
Because TV had very few channels the value of TV time was very high so only things of VERY broad interest could be aired on those few channels. The information highway will be the opposite of this—more like the library of congress but with an easy way to find things.

「什麼激勵了你」已經他們的聯盟關係：

Its easy to understand why I think I have the best job around because of day to day enjoyment rather than some grand long term deep psychological explanation. Its a lot of fun to work with very smart people in a competitive environment. . . .We get to hire the best people coming out of school and give them challenging jobs. We get to try and figure out how to sell software in every part of the world. Sometimes our ideas work very well and sometimes they work very poorly. As long as we stay in the feedback loop and keep trying its a lot of fun.
It is pretty cool that the products we work on empower individuals and make their jobs more interesting. It helps a lot in inventing new software ideas that I will be one of the users of the software so I can model what’s important . . . .
Just thinking of things as winning is a terrible approach. Success comes from focusing in on what you really like and are good at—not challenging every random thing. My original vision of a personal computer on every desk and every home will take more than 15 years to achieve so there will have been more than 30 years since I first got excited about that goal. My work is not like sports where you actually win a game and its over after a short period of time.
Besides a lot of luck, a high energy level and perhaps some IQ_I think having an ability to deal with things at a very detailed level and a very broad level and synthesize between them is probably the thing that helps me the most. This allows someone to take a deep technical understanding and figure out a business strategy that fits together with it.
It’s ridiculous to consider how things will be remembered after you are dead. The pioneers of personal computers including Jobs, Kapor, Lampson, Roberts, Kaye, are all great people but I don’t think any of us will merit an entry in a history book.
I don’t remember being wounded or losing something big so I don’t think that is driving me. I have wonderful parents and great siblings. I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in (although I will be moving across the lake when my new house is done). I can’t remember any major disappointments. I did figure out at one point that if I pursued pure mathematics it would be hard to make a major contribution and there were a few girls who turned me down when I asked them out.
I comb my hair everytime before I send email hoping to appear attractive. I try and use punctuation in a friendly way also. I send :) and never :(.
Your mail is the first time I have ever heard anyone suggest that John Malone and Jerry Levin deserve sympathy. They are both great people. They are both smarter about deal making than I will ever be. John and Jerry and I share a vision of what the Information Highway can become. Its an incredible opportunity for all 3 companies and we have been spending time to discussing how we might help each other. We don’t have anything concrete at this stage although we have developed a high level of trust for each other.

看徹底文還能發現更多有趣的內容，好比這些：

I think that giving money away takes a lot of effort. Not as much effort as making it but still a lot to do it properly. Therefore when I am old and have time I will put some effort into that. Assuming I still have a lot of money by the time I retire which is certainly no certain thing I will give away well over 90% of it since I dont believe in kids having too much money. I am like my friend Warren Buffett in this respect. I have already done some giving like to UW for a biotechnology department [Gates gave the University of Washington twelve million dollars] and some to Stanford for a computer science building [six million] and some to United Way which I really believe in. I do believe in funding great research so some of my philanthropy will relate to that. Some to humans service activities. Some to education. Some to population control efforts if it looks like donations can really help there.

以及這些等等：

Gatsby had a dream and he pursued it not even really thinking he might fail or worse that what he dreamed of wasn’t real. The green light is a symbol of his optimism—he had come so far he could hardly fail to grasp it. At the end Fitz is reinforcing what a romantic figure Gatsby is. Its also sort of about America but I think of it more in terms of the people.
Once, when I was composing E-mail to Gates on an airplane, I felt physically closer to him than when I was composing from home. Perhaps I was thinking of all the thousands of people who have encountered this remarkable person on airplanes, restlessly wandering the aisles with his shoes off, or sitting in a seat staring into the screen of his laptop computer, rocking, writing E-mail that will be fired into the network when the plane lands and send hundreds of people at Microsoft scurrying into action.
Many executives in the telegraph industry, which had enjoyed control of the communications field since about 1840, believed that the telephone did not present a threat to their business, because no one would want a communications machine that did not leave a written record of the conversation, as telegrams did. When William Orton, the president of Western Union, which was the Microsoft of its day, was offered the opportunity to buy Alexander Graham Bell’s patent on the telephone for a hundred thousand dollars, he is said to have replied, 「What use could this company make of an electric toy?」 This remark seems less dim to me now.

相信咱們也正在作一件之後看起來是「理所應當」的事情：）