The first personal computer (PC) that I used was an Apple II, circa 1977.  I read about it in an article in Fortune magazine and visited my local ComputerLand store to purchase it.  Early adopters of Apple machines had to be comfortable plugging in circuit boards and controllers and handling floppy drives, monitors and other miscellaneous components of the early personal computers.  I talked my boss at Pricewaterhouse into buying an Apple III (a more powerful machine) for our office in 1979 and we found that we had to classify it as a word processor (remember those?) instead of a computer since individual offices were not allowed to purchase computers.  In 1981, IBM released its personal computer which operated under the Microsoft DOS operating system and the era of personal computing exploded.

Because the companies I worked for standardized on the MS-DOS/Windows platforms initiated by IBM, I didn’t go back to Apple for years.  Around 1997, my wife and I purchased the first iMac for home use.  Alas, the product didn’t meet our needs for power surfing on the internet, so we gifted it to a local school and purchased another Windows compatible machine for home use.

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In July, Richard Stengel, editor of Time Magazine, interviewed Bill Gates about his theory of Creative Capitalism.  A six-minute video from this interview is available on Time’s website.

Gates passionately believes that technology provides solutions to many of the world’s key problems.  He also believes that life changes due to technology can only occur where people can afford the technology.  In a speech that he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2008, Gates spoke about Creative Capitalism. In that speech, he defined it as “creative capitalism – an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequalities.”  Some examples of companies engaging in creative capitalism include:  (1) Microsoft – provides low cost or free technology to those who do not have access; (2) Crucell, a Dutch company that holds the patents on a cholera vaccine in the developed world but shares those rights with drug manufacturers in developing countries so that the drug can be manufactured and delivered at very low costs ($1/dose in Vietnam); (3) Iscar, an Israeli metalworking company, that locates its plants in areas where it can employ minorities such as Israeli Arabs; and (4) other companies such as Converse, Gap, Armani, Dell, and Apple that participate in the RED Campaign started by Bono.

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