[Porsche-O-Phile]

Bill has a mixed legacy. On the one hand he revolutionized the work environment, made document retrieval and archiving much easier and simpler, built a huge company and made himself a household name (and a large fortune). His philanthropic works are to be commended.

My biggest gripe is that the rise of the personal computer (one can argue whether this would have been inevitable, with or without Bill Gates & Microsoft) has made the landscape of the work world flat, sterile and boring. The rise of the personal computer gave rise to Cubicle Nation. Somewhere along the line we've been fooled into thinking that virtually any job - from lawyers to engineers to accountants to HR people to managers to designers to whatever - can all do their jobs from identical 4'x6' cubicles with partial-height, cloth covered gray walls & a PC.

While some jobs are better suited for this than others and most do see some benefits from computerization, it has made the world a helluva lot less colorful and more boring that it was years ago. A doctor's office used to look like a doctor's office. A design studio used to look like a design studio. An accounting firm used to look like an accounting firm, etc. Now if you blindfolded someone and walked them into most offices and then took the blindfold off and asked them to identify what kind of work went on there, they probably couldn't in most cases, since everything is so homogenized and identical and soulless. I really think that over-emphasis on computerization has a lot to do with this.

In my own profession (architectural design) I see what I consider WAY too much emphasis on computers and AutoCAD proficiency in particular. There are some benefits, but nobody ever talks about how the software gets in the way by over-complicating things, how "up-and-coming" people cannot spatially visualize things, can't draw by hand, can't sketch ideas, etc. I thank goodness I got through my schooling before it went 100% computerized and was forced to draw by hand, to use a drafting board, to sketch, to render and to draw BY HAND. Sometimes, it's the best tool for the job. Sometimes (like for doing hardline construction documents) AutoCAD is the best tool for the job. But it's only one tool. Not the ONLY tool, as we've unfortunately been led to believe. I'm sure other professions have the same sorts of issues. . .

Bill certainly changed the world. Hopefully for the better more than for worse, but time will be the judge of that. . .