CHM Revolutionaries: Idea Man- Author Paul Allen with Jose Antonio Vargas

you know it's the ambition to try that's there you know you have a great team of people that's just you know enthralling people who tore these galleries often say wow I had no idea many think computing is about scientists engineers and mathematicians but if you've ever texted emailed shopped online or worked from home on your laptop you know computing is about you in the 1980s computing became personal it moved from the kit builders garage to hundreds of millions of desktops much of the fuel for that revolution was software created by a small start-up called Microsoft co-founder paul allen was here recently and we had a Frank and open conversation about those early days his later career and his personal views about the future um I should just begin by saying that sometimes you just can't really trust the media and I'm saying there's no idea and I'm saying this is somebody who comes from the media I think we tend to kind of you know oversimplify we sensationalize I think we care more about we care more about kind of the tension and conflict and less about kind of depth and contacts and I'm saying this cuz I mean judging by like the excerpt on 60 minutes I mean the segment on 60 minutes that superbad any fair some reviews some blogs you would think that you know that your book is like something out of like the social network of luck in the 1980s or something like it's like a Bill Gates vs paul island slam fest I think somebody said that you're the bitter billionaire and so I'm reading the stuff and then I finally actually read the book and then a mic wait up a second did they read the exact same book that I just read Oh exactly and I mean I think the point that I'm trying to get out is this idea that I think in the book you write us critically about yourself and about what you've done and kind of the failures that you've had a successes and the failures just as critically as you've written about the future of Microsoft or the relationship with Bill Gates I think that was really interesting and actually that's kind of where I wanted to start off is you know you've been wii u bik witness on my Google Alert for like the past two months now and you're in this promotional book tour and I'm just curiously what is surprised you the most about how people have reacted to the book what has been the biggest surprise well I think there's a Blair's been a number of things I think in my life I've been fortunate to be involved with so many different things obviously my involved with Microsoft will always be the signature achievement all the way I have high hopes for what the brain Institute's doing now we'll talk about that later but but I've been involved in so many different things that you know if anybody tries to pitch and hold me into one area it's hard to do I think they struggle they struggle to do that and you've said this in the book and you also said in interviews that writing this book was one of the hardest things you've ever done why why why do what do you say that well I mean it I'd been thinking about doing a book for years and then I got very very ill and and during that period I just decided I was good you know now was the time to do the book because I wasn't sure I was going to be around to see the book published so I would get up every day feeling very fatigued and from chemotherapy and everything and I work work on the book and then after after the you know the first drafts were finished then my you know my old heritage is a programmer kind of came back to the fore and I would meticulously go through an edit and change phrase and especially the technical details you try to make them you know digestible you know for the for the lay public but yet but yet give them a sense could have everybody a sense of what it was like and I and I hope I and I hope I did that but I went through every word in the book eight times and I don't I don't need to read it again I mean in terms of was it hard dough I mean a lot of people I think have made the mistake of saying that you've been a recluse I think you've just been private I think there's a difference between the two words um has it been hard being so public about some of the stuff you some of the stuff that you write in the book and of course I'm talking about some of that it goes concerning bill gates are just downright like I mean I'm waiting for like the Hollywood version of how this is all going to play out I mean is it is it tough to do that so publicly how does that well when you write when you write an autobiography like this and I think you're faced with a choice are you going to tell it as you experienced it and tell the highs and lows and the important parts of your life and I just chose to do that in a very unvarnished warts-and-all way because I think I thought that was what it that was really what it deserved and people deserved to hear and you know I feel like you know I made some some I had some signature successes and some some things that didn't work out as well but that a technology and other things that happens not everything you're not going to bad a thousand in anything in technology but what do you make of the people some of them like former Microsoft employees like when the when the extra which ones it's good I don't think they're in the audience they're not going to name them but some of whom were like surprised at the extra from that an affair saying why is he speaking out now and why is he acting like you know I mean what's the point of that like what's the point of airing out dirty laundry like that well I think that was a key moment in my life when I decided you know you're you're a founder of a company you decide to leave and the way that it happened the at that time was you know stun and so I felt it was important to to tell that because it was a signature moment of my life so and give people an idea of that trajectory which went from a you know a hugely productive and innovative and fun partnership to the lowes there at the end and so I went on to you know to do many other things since then but that was that was that was definitely important chapter in my life well I mean it definitely is it definitely reads like anybody who has read the book it reads like a book in which somebody had nothing to lose you just kind of wrote it all out and I think in many ways that's a testament to what you've done yeah and and again i wrote i wrote a lot of it you know in those moments where always thinking I've got to get this down I've gotta felt like it was and hopefully people will will get something out of when they read it no did you give anybody like did you give Steve Ballmer now the current you know CEO microsoft Bill Gates they get it get kind of law hey this is coming just so you know no your hands up oh they didn't get on and what do they say uh I have yet to to talk to Bill about the book yeah i read that i am but i expect i'll have a very intense discussion with bill Steve I've talked to ya uh and he basically says hey you know the book portrays you know the pole I know and and the you know the events that you recount their you know did happen so they gave me no one has challenged any facts no look so can you take us back you know at that moment when you what you were in a tenth grade he was in the eighth grade this was lakeside school I think what North Seattle yeah like what was it like to meet him for the bunny walk why did you think you guys would click what was the thing that you thought that all right this guy's interesting well you know there's some pictures of Bill and me together over slaving over a hot ASR 33 teletype which I think there there's some examples downstairs here in the museum I just remember bill used to wear saddle shoes and anyway in sweat earth and he walks in very gangly young man and after a few weeks after this teletype terminal was at our high school there were just if there are a few of us that were just almost Elbing our way to get time on the terminal and bill was one of them I was one of them in there were few there were a few others and then at the end of the month they would post up kind of a horrifying list of how much money you'd run up on the time sharing service every you know and bill and I are always up there at the top and you think how am I going to explain to my parents $68 on time sharing you know and so that was always anxiety provoking well how about how about that day when you saw the article in popular mechanics what was that nineteen cybertronics pop electronics it you will rot you saw in Harvard Square so I'm you actually that magazine if you check out check out the revolutionaries exhibit and this museum is basically the first two thousand years of computing it's really interesting but yeah the magazine is like blown up downstairs and what was that what was that feeling like when you saw that magazine in Europe good basis right how is it was a feeling of vindication because I've been telling bill for a long time we should be doing a basic interpreter basic language interpreter for microprocessor chip and first we'd actually built machine be based on the eight thousand eight microprocessor chip for a failed company that processed the data produced by traffic recorder so you used to drive or of these rubber hoses in the street would punch out a 16-channel bc decoded tape this audience i feel like i can get technical right anybody understand what they never promised a blue ok technical jargon it's ok alright so it so anyway so so to build that machine I remember one day bill and I I think we slept down 20 max Strom and we bought this 8008 because I was convinced that you could build we could basically build our own mini computer with microprocessor chip we found a guy to to do the engineering and and so it came wrapped in this was it was it was stuck into this piece of insulating plastic and wrapped aluminum foil and it cost three hundred and sixty dollars and we're like wow this is a whole processor and it's you know whatever it's like an inch long or something and so that's how we got our start so we learned all about micro processors then and then i would say bill we should do basic for the 8080 say it's too slow and it's only got a seven level stack and come on Paul you never loose news never it's gonna be unusable so then the 8080 came out and I said the 8080 bill come on you'd say but we don't know anybody back in Boston to build another you know computer let's wait until somebody produces a computer with an 80 80 in it and then I went down to City News in Harvard Square and sought and plunked down by 75 cents and ran back and show the magazine to bill the first sentence of that article and that magazine was the era of the computer and every home has arrived that was a very first sentence and I'm curious kind of in concrete terms when you spent what two months kind of you know really I'll tear basic and figuring this out like what was that what did I feel like what did you what were you envisioning this going where was it going the way you were thinking about it what about you on that time I mean you know we didn't we didn't know we had no idea what MIT's was like and I talked later in the book about flying out to Albuquerque and running that first version of base if we had no idea you know exactly how fast the rocket of you know home computers and personal computers was going to take off and how our software was going to become an amazing part of that change so we thought well skis if we're really successful maybe one day we'll have 35 employees I think Microsoft is over over 90,000 now yeah so so those are early day you have to remember back then there really were I mean there were not a regime like what was no we were worried that there was competition but anyway no we can I kept I just my my role is kind of look read every computer design electronics news i just read everything and trying to see you know computer more computer world was more about these behemoths that you see downstairs you know 360s and univ acts and everything else but I my job was to look out over the rice and see what could be coming and I didn't see anything about basics from anybody else so I thought we thought we had a head start but we weren't sure well I'm curious and you probably know this but you know Microsoft was found in the same year that Gordon Moore the Intel co-founder came up with you know Moore's law right basically saying that the number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months did that did this matter to you then which is something you were thinking about them this idea of everything getting to be cheaper better and faster well you could see the trend because yeah the first chip I was aware of was the 4000 for than the 8008 of course which we built that first machine on and that's actually in a museum in the Natural History Museum in Albuquerque and and then the 8080 so you were you were aware that the chips were getting so much better and so much faster and cheaper and now of course at the every component of like a portable device or a computer every part of it gets cheaper and faster and better every year so it's been amazing I mean you knew that trend was happening you didn't know it as necessarily as Moore's law at the time but it was obviously happening in that way but you know actually I thought the most interesting passage about Bill Gates in the book is when you wrote quote I left Microsoft a quarter century before builded and we both had our signal triumph since then but in certain respects neither of us has been quite as good alone us we were together so I'm reading this and I'm thinking to myself wait up so is he trying to say that what would have happened if you would have stayed in like yourself what would have happened you know in the past 10 years that's been going on to the Microsoft was falling by the wayside not the wayside but clearly is in a sexiest Facebook or Twitter or Google like do you ever think about what would happen if you would have stayed oh I you know I have thought about it I mean in technology I mean we were we just accomplished some amazing things and bill was an amazingly to use Microsoft language hard core business person that did and the company did super well certainly in the years in a writer after i left i think it's it said more challenges recently we'll probably talk about that in a few minutes but but but yeah you just you know just think how you know i mean in retrospect you know how lucky was I to have a partner is capable as Bill Gates and then you know we we worked shoulder to shoulder writing that initial code and and you know I brought my ideas to the table so yeah of course I'd like to think that if I'd stayed there I could have affected the course of things but I had when I left I had really wasn't planning on staying I wanted to start a new chapter in my life and do other things and actually tried to retire at age 30 which lasted for about 18 months and which actually reached me to this point she said that you thought about they basically I'd retired by 30 right I mean I'm looking and of course that lasted 18 months but i'm looking here in the valley of people like you know jack dorsey or zuckerberg that are leading their own companies like what advice would you give them you know as somebody who's gone through that process of starting help helping start something and like this is their life this is what they're doing would you like tell them to just take a break or like what would you tell them well i mean the other the other thing the influence my departure of course was my yes was my health and I I didn't know you know I you know the doctors basically said they thought I was cured but at the age 30 but I didn't know that so that was also a big wake-up a big factor a big wake-up call but I mean if there's certain things that I am it's I don't think they're that mysterious but you have to be eternally vigilant about new platforms coming down the pike and if you think about Facebook and Twitter you know both of those could have been created earlier I mean there was mice used to be thing called myspace not that long ago but you know you can if when a new platform comes along and evolves more rapidly you can be obsoleted quickly so you got to be incredibly vigilant you have to hire the best people and retain them which in Silicon Valley the reason we didn't move Microsoft to Silicon Valley was because bill said but Paul in Silicon Valley everybody changes jobs in 18 months is it this is still true that was in 1977 still true it's killed through so we said yeah Seattle reign I want to go outside to improve your terminal so anyway and of course I found our families our families were there so so there's I'm so sorry so there's really no hiring a obtaining great people and and then and then there's the blind spot thing where you're you just don't see these these other platforms but that could potentially obsolete you coming and then you and companies like you know even Google and Apple they didn't really see the social network stuff coming yeah I like it taking root like it has you know Microsoft celebrated its what 36th birthday earlier this month 36 birthday um I'm curious like where do you think Microsoft is now in relation to say Google Facebook Apple what you call by the way in the book us what is it high-tech hellhounds can you define that what why don't you call them high tech hell house those damn Hill House yeah yeah that's from an old actually got that phrases from a blues song but anyway hellhounds de because hellhounds on my trail i think is the name of the song but yeah I mean Microsoft always had a lot of competition but the competition today is incredibly fierce from you know the companies we've already talked about and and so you know you they're trying to fight kind of a multi-front war and it's it's hard to innovate yet I mean to get people to change their habits being their behavior the inertia is it's pretty strong so if you want to change someone to a different search engine it has to be as good and better you know or a social network or a mobile phone platform so they're working in a number of those areas and I have friends over there and I certainly encourage them and try to give a good idea now and then but it's it's a big challenge as its as it is for for companies you know Apple trying to do paying or something it's a challenge to come from from not having a position to being a major influence there in that area so so it's that's just the the lay of the land right now is that saying in the Microsoft is behind all those three companies is that well we're just saying in some of these area I mean enterprise there other areas like the pc and enterprise software microsoft has a great position as you know is superbly profitable and has some great people but competing in all those different areas that's another thing you gotta pick your sometimes you have to pick your spots and microsoft also is in game platforms to where they have a hey I like a little fellows great connect come on I'll connect yes that's right yes yeah but what I think is interesting is me let's not let it be said that you know Microsoft is definitely is still an influential incredible company that's been so woven in our into our lives I mean I grew up you know like you know like Microsoft Word pc right I think we kind of have forgotten that it's even there it's so woven into our lives but you've written in the book about what you called what you call it's breathtaking fall from grace you roads i'm quoting you to yourself it wasn't so long ago that microsoft stood by the slogan that bill and i followed at the start we set the standards but there's no one in redmond speaking privately and candidly who would make that claim today well i thought i think i was referring to new to new standards for class I mean Microsoft has a has an amazing position you know they have the leadership position on the pc but we're all carrying around you know there's mobile mobile different kinds of mobile devices yeah and now tablets have taken the field too and people are trying to there's going to be an incredible battle between different tablet suppliers to so when these new platforms come down the pike it's incumbent on you to really internalize that and mount your you know you're attacked to you know to keep your amazing engine going in these new areas and and Microsoft is has been lagging in some of these areas and I I'm very I'm very straightforward about that in the book I mean and you basically said that you know if Microsoft fails to catch up in Mobile it's in for a long slow slide what is what do you think strategy-wise can Microsoft do with Windows Mobile to kind of get it up in the same more example the market share is nowhere near where blackberry in terms of the software from the blackberry or the or the eye for the iPhone or even the Android like what do you think Microsoft can do well on any anytime you're challenged by when you're coming from behind on the platform you know like it again you have to meet the capabilities and then have some things that are persuasive to get people to switch because people won't switch unless something is dramatically better i mean take you know look at the example of google there was a time when there was I don't know there must have been five there was yahoo and five other other churches and then they came up with something better yeah so to really take back huge chunks of market share you've got to meet and beat and that's and that's and that requires you know shorter development cycles maybe your best people agility and fin focus a lot of focus well I mean I'm curious from from an investment perspective I was actually you know of course doing up some reading on you and a business reporter once wrote that you suffered from a sort of investors attention death disorder um that there was there was one point that you invested in more than 100 internet media communications companies and you know the missteps miscalculations have been costly so I'm just curious like what has been in your mind from a from an investment standpoint and don't worry I'm gonna ask about the biggest success so I'm not just gonna ask you to talk about laterally but I'm curious from your perspective what has been you think the biggest failure for you the most was the cop most costly by far was Charter Communications I I felt that cable was in potentially a new platform because they're going to have high-speed pipes into millions of millions of homes which which back then they didn't and now they now they do but the product cycle and cable is very slow yeah compared to anything else just about so to put new set-top boxes and take advantage of those capabilities took longer than I expected but the actual delivery of data into people's homes has been fantastically successful the cable but the main problem with the Charter was just the amount of leverage which which which was too high well how about it sorry but in terms of the breadth of things yeah I mean you like what ticket Matt I mean I mean of course that wasn't decision you made money off yeah take a mouse cursor invested in a you know LOL yeah well early sold too early priceline many other things and start at ESPN what's now espn.com sold that to Disney so many successes along the way but you know you invest you know if you invest in it during the internet bubble or something you know bubbles a bubble so everyone's going to get you know going to have some painful experiences during a bubble too so I've tried to do many many different things and had some great successes and and some signature failures so and they're all in the I think they're pretty much the big ones the big bad ones in the big good ones they're mostly in the book yeah and by the way what would you consider the biggest successes investment wise DreamWorks was that would you consider that part of no no Hollywood is so did I mean the Hollywood mentality soft just to give you an example in Microsoft if we made if we made a mistake or miss the trend or whatever when i was there we would just flagellate herself how do we miss that are we going to catch up and hollywood you say but this this Mooney it's it's not that great and then box office was horrible and they said well I work but we've got another movie coming out and so there it's not you know have the the post analysis you doing that I think he a healthy post analysis like you have in technology good technology companies so I was I was a bit of a fish out of water in that world I try to I try to I tried to contribute a few things my like one of the few things I think I talk about in the book yeah that was now this is the level of effect i had i said hey Shrek when he walks the ground doesn't deform there's no dust and and your brain is telling you something is wrong but you know but you don't know what it is and said okay we're going to fix it cost a million dollars it's fine now so that's the kind of effects I'm sorry what was that a million-dollar she said I think was a million so I think that that's a lot for dust but you know so I mean I've done some documentary films that that we talked about earlier yeah one on psychology called this emotional life when on global health and one on evolution which I'm very very proud of our documentary work but documentaries in yo are you know are just philanthropic endeavors base yeah but I mean for respect than what has been for you the best investment so far uh well I mean a few years ago i invested in some some I mean some people convinced me to invest in oil and gas pipelines yes I read about okay go on turns out a lot of people need oil and gas and and so I did very well on that investment but but it's not one of those things you know most investments that I really enjoy that was super profitable WL since I really enjoy the ones where you know you think you as a technology person you can add some value and that happens and it's really rewarding you early you see hey online service is AOL it's going to do great then I thought it's doing great but microsoft says they're going to crush a it well so maybe time to sell so I saw them made some money so I've had again just pure investing you know probably the oil and gas pure pure investing and not technology oil and gas thing which tech companies right now by the way here in the valley would you invest on if you could the valuations are so crazily hi no they're not you sure yeah yeah yeah they are yeah they are look what would you invest on again I mean I don't want to comment on any any known companies I think you just you do your best due diligence to make sure there's something really really new and defensible I mean I've had a few ideas in the last you know couple years and I'd say what if you did combine this with this because a lot of you know my best ideas are combination of you know basic and the microprocessor chip or whatever and I'd say what about that and then my staff would say Paul there's 20 companies doing that I'd say geez okay well you know so it's very very it's very very crowded right now so you have to be super aware of the competitive landscape and whether somebody else has has momentum I mean I should point out by the way that when I was writing this up this idea of owning a football team right the Seattle Seahawks right basketball team the Portland Trail Blazers what is what is the score by two and we were in the green room he was basically looking at the scores I think they were down 52 dollars or something or something like that um you've funded you funded the first privately financed rocket to fly the edge of space you found in your own music museum your own you own the guitar that Jimi Hendrix played Woodstock and apparently you also own to share the captain kirk SATA and the Star Wars movies are true okay it's a modified office chair though so okay all right it's not as impressive as a person as it looks on and then just enterprise and then there's this ah and then there's this eighth level 714 on 414 feet yacht um and in addition to that I'm sorry to feel bad no I'm just saying I'm kid I mean as I'm as I'm writing all this stuff down I'm thinking of myself is there like anything you haven't but you want to do that you haven't actually done it well I i know i think you know we haven't talked about the brain yet but they're absolutely i mean i think you start talking about science scientific problems or challenges I mean the fact that spaceship one succeeded nobody knew that with the other problems why the XPrize nobody knew that was going to happen when we we started so sometimes you know by being ambitious and trying to accomplish some of those these things sometimes you know you fail sometimes you know that you never succeed to win a prize or or get you know the products not a success in the marketplace but it's but it's you know it's the ambition to try that's there you know you have a tea great team of people that's just you know enthralling so so there are many many challenges out there I'm you know especially excited about anything related to the brain with a brain Institute's doing and then in an artificial intelligence i still have always had a nagging interest in and we're starting to get some traction there so but i think you're talking about more things that are more related to your personal life in terms of everything that you well if we're talking about sure fun yeah i mean i was just in Antarctica a couple months ago and that's fascinating you slowly cruise up on a sleeping whale or something it's wonderful or but then you go with the scientists and they say here's the bay that you're in and here's what it looked like 20 years ago and it was full of ice there's no ice it's almost gone I mean so the global warming stuff that's that's right so you can see you can see it so in terms of adventures there's a chapter in the book about adventures you know I've and some of that some of the thinking there was inspired by you know seeing Jacques Cousteau movies as a kid I don't know I've I've I've had just wonderful experiences trying to explore the fun side I think the fun side of life and I think it's incumbent on all of us that are in technology to think how do we balance our lives at between the siren of like I can fix that last bug versus know maybe I should go home and spend some more time with my family or whatever it might be or go bowling whatever that the other thing that other things that calls to you are music for me is a big passion yeah clearly and actually back to the brain cuz i'm curious because there was some reporter just came out about the landmark map of the human brain right why was it so groundbreaking this is of course from from the Allen Institute for brain science why was also groundbreaking well we're doing things at industrial scale so we basically get get human brains in slice them up and then look at the gene expression for all 25,000 plus genes in the human brain and put the data online for scientists around the world to in there and their research and so it's no individual lab could do it to the level I think of thoroughness and quality and multiple brains it takes an industrial type approach like was used in the human genome project yeah so we started with the mouse brain now we're doing human developing human we did some work on autistic brains so it's just it's endlessly fascinating to me because the way the brain works is is we're just we're just starting to see the outlines of it we're starting to get a sketchy idea of it and there's so much work to be done and each part since each part was designed by evolution it's optimized for what it does in particular so it's the opposite of computer which is basically pretty much a regular structure the brain every little bit of it is optimized to do it to do its job so it's endlessly fascinating compelling and mind-boggling we have a question here from Ed Feigenbaum who apparently is the Guru of artificial intelligence who's actually here tonight and the question is Paul in my view Vulcan which is the company that that you own is supporting and managing one of the best artificial intelligence projects in the world can you tell the audience a little bit about it and what motivated you to set it up well on the one hand you're trying to I mean to finish off in the brain you're trying to understand how does the brain I mean ultimately we all love to know how does the brain work as the brain work and then if there are treatments for our neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's which my mother has how can you make those treatments happen earlier so so I'm fascinated by all that work on the brain which works totally differently then you've got artificial intelligence where you know programmers sit there with blank sheets of paper and say okay you don't know how the brain works but we want to do something similar so I have a team in Seattle trying to encode initially it's a biology textbook and put all that knowledge in software in a it's a well-trodden path but it's sooo were hard to do knowledge representation as I'm sure mr. mr. Feigenbaum would could elaborate a better length than I can it's super hard to do that in software because real life reasoning involves probabilities and things that aren't are still research areas for artificial intelligence so we're moving down that path and you can see 10 20 30 years down the road maybe we'll have something really really significant there and some some more breakthroughs but in the meantime we're concentrating on getting a biology text inside computer software in a way that you can ask you could ask the student can ask questions and get a coherent answer from the software so it's really it's really some groundbreaking work and Mark grieves in a team in Seattle or are managing it we actually have worked on it at essar I and many other places too to forward that work would you say that right now project halo which is the road may I and also the Institute are those are two projects are you most excited about right now yeah I mean I have a kind of a couple of little internet things that are incubating but but I mean the brain and AI those two things alone you could spend many lifetimes trying to figure out a way figure out ways to accelerate oh excuse me accelerate progress so I'm just excited to be involved in those areas and I'm looking out for other areas and other things that you know any philanthropy I know chargin stuff for a second I mean philanthropy is a wonderful thing to be involved in to be able to give back because if you have signature success I think it's incumbent on you to give back and and you know and you pledged last July right yeah I all I always intended to give ya the majority of my assets to philanthropy and Bill called me up and said would you join and he's done so many I mean he's taken on some very very tough problems with in global health and hilaria and education those are huge problems but I think in if you're doing your own philanthropy you have to say okay what what you know what appeals to me what makes it work and I make a difference in terms of the solution of this problem so I'm really focused on on the brain right now all right I'm going to ask some questions from the audience and local philanthropy yeah I mean Pacific I mean the Pacific Northwest is benefited i think was it nearly a billion dollars i think i'm an investment and in philanthropy in that area so who was your mentor is it important to have one one question well i mean i think through your life you have a series of people that that have a positive influence and give you a chance to succeed obviously my parents and i talked about a lot in the book basically you know my father was library and my mother was a schoolteacher so i spent so much time you know around books and in the stacks at the university of washington library and just try to absorb everything I could so that so that so and then I got to high school obviously we kind of were self-taught except there were there a bunch of X MIT and Stanford people at the computer center that was giving away free time that we got hooked up with and I don't do you Steve Russell here tonight did you make it anyway Steve Russell who did space war for the PDP one you know bill and I would literally dive in dumpsters to get these listings of coffee stains listening zones and I could smell that coffee today and then we pour through these these listings are conmigo oh my gosh I don't know what it's doing but it's beautiful so so you so you kind of absorb some of that through through osmosis you know as you go along the way but but so active mentoring you know and then the teachers you have in school through that you excited about other things like like Shakespeare whatever I mean it's a it's so important I mean I've enjoyed having a well-rounded life where I'm interested in so many different things and that's I try to convey it a little bit in the book but you know I think you did if there's so many things that are unbelievably fascinating in the world whether it's literature or art or you know the oceans die on you can keep going on I'm music you can go on and on forever so any of those worlds you can get drawn into if you've got somebody that that shows you the way is excited about it or the experience music project Museum in Seattle we deliberately tried like I think this museum is doing to show young people that you know hey you can play you know try playing a guitar and if you can make a couple notes maybe you want to learn how to play guitar and you can do the same thing I think with hopefully do more things here to get young people interesting program another question what do you see is the next big thing and why hmm that's a hard one I mean I think eventually some of these AI type systems and recently we saw lots and win in jeopardy some of those things eventually those things are going to be you know so much better or speech understanding will be so much better but in terms of you know things happening in the cloud or whatever I am I can I can't say any particular there this is a really great question Paul at an early age you achieved fabulous wealth which enabled you to recreate your life in any way you wanted to was that liberating or horrifying to have everything you ever wanted to do right in front of you it's not liberating or horrifying well no it gives you so many more possibilities and options and but then you're then you're a steward of those assets so if you have reversals or or whatever a big reversal you just feel awful so you have to be you have to be very very careful and and you know I mean all of the you know the resources that I have by far the lion's share of those are going to go philanthropy when I pass so so there is there is that realization that you have to keep that in mind please describe interactions with IBM late 70s as the pc merged so basically microsoft anew guys said we're not going to wear ties like IBM people wear ties right wasn't that we were just talking it was a famous story how bill goes to the first meeting in in boca and he forgot to bring a tie so they had to buy a tie the last at the last second forum but by the time you know we're working on the IBM pc in seattle you know it was just it was just really you know i was just on pins and needles because the basic that we were doing was going to go on read only memory and i was just so afraid that there was going there were going to be bugs in it which there were just a couple there are a couple of bugs in there so i put these little hooks in so i could replace in ram any any bad areas of the rom code and those turned out to be invaluable but you know basically thing about IBM is they didn't like what we were doing das there's this there's a story in the in the book for bill and I are arguing about the fact that das das 2 point 0 was delayed and and I I thought this thing called tree-structured directories and path names should be you know in das 2 point 0 and IBM wanted partitions and so to get tree structure directories which III can't claim any credit for they were they were part of UNIX back in the day you know the IBM guys were like when we're happy with partitions I'm going like no no tree structure and she could restructure directories and then and then of course the product got delayed and there was a bunch of back and forth about that but I mean they were basically you know they basically came to us and said you know we want to do pc want to buy all your software you know where we get an operating system you're like we just seem great you know and the rest the rest is history but but so we were really you know as kids in our late 20s kids I mean young men are late 20s you know we knew it was going to be big but we had no idea how big that opportunity is going to be turned out to be cuz everybody wanted to make a copy of the idea Jesse we have a space question what do you expect from spaceship one a true commercial spaceflight company may be in early Boeing a Lockheed an actor Richard Branson has already taken the the patents in the analytical license for the spaceship one technology and I think in not too long I don't fits a year or two years they'll start flying people flying paying passengers in the space and it basically you go straight up and you come straight back down in a period of about half an hour and it's an amazing ride and you're floating weightless in space for about five minutes so that's so that's going to be exciting but when I was watching these flights I was even I was you know I was used to well something goes wrong I'll get an error message in rocketry if something goes wrong oh shoot it's with with a human being inside it's really bad like when another naive question I have a history of occasionally asking questions in retrospect appear humorous I said who line up them but not this one really because I said well you know they're there had to be three seats in spaceship one so good when the XPrize she had to be able to be capable of flying three people into space and I said well why are our test flights only one person and they said in case something goes wrong Paul oh yeah yeah so so when those flights were happening I was so nervous and just so happy when they got back on the ground please speak a little bit about Judgment Day intelligent design that was a that was a documentary that we did yeah following up on the evolution documentary we talked about you know a law court case that happened about textbooks and every I reckon I know it's interesting i recommend people see it but basically there's this theory and intelligent design that they're you know people that just try to justify intelligent design say there aren't these intermediate forms if you get a flagella on a bacteria something like that there's no way it could have been created other than by an intelligent designer and and yet biologists you know you put biologists in the witness stand they say wait a minute no there's there's like five intermedia forums and then the argument kind of devolves down into well what about between those forums and then you go way too well we found this one well they're still you know so it's but basically there are the intermediate forms for all these things exist in some way so in my in my opinion so so that's what it's about you know I got actually four questions here all about what was like to face your mortality and actually think I wanted to bring up the fact in the book you actually thank two doctors right because you basically you were diagnosed and recovered from cancer twice was it nearly 30 years was the time difference same doctor same doctor I'm curious what what was the difference he's doing I mean you said when you when you were first diagnosed the first time you said that it was a wake-up call ah it late turns out the alarm can go off in late two thousand nine and you got diagnosed for the second time like what went through your head well I mean the first time when you have what I had Hodgkin's disease they actually developed the treatment that I had here at Stanford in fact I was just in the Stanford book I love bookstores I was in the Stanford bookstore today and there was a book about the stock i think was dr. Henry Kaplan that developed the treatment for radiation treatment for Hodgkin's disease and so so they tell you when you get this radiation look we're giving you the amount of radiation basically the body can stand and that some period of time maybe 20 or 30 years there may be repercussions of having that radiation but you know when you're 30 and you get and you have a life-threatening illness it's an it's just a shock you can't believe it and then takes a while to realize you're going to be you have the chance to be okay at least at least I had that chance this last this last situation I just knew I was really really sick and it had advanced it was an advanced case so for right what ya stage for so but they had a head of the kind of the standard I mean it was like one of those things where they they call you up and they say and just kind of nowhere deco when I it was first sex they called me up and they said okay you've got we found some bad cells and that's just that moment where your blood runs cold and then then the net then you meet with the oncologist he says well actually it's this they called a garden-variety large b-cell lymphoma whatever and they say he said it's actually the good news you know the bad news is it's progressed the better the good news is it's it's curable so I consider myself very lucky I'm going to ask one more question from the audience and then my last question um how does your attitude towards living life reflect your two battles with mortality well again I'll get back to the balance point I think you have to think about you know all the things you do you know to enjoy you know work and creating things but there's so many other parts of life that you need to do justice to and explore and so to find that balance is such an important thing and when these things happen you realize the importance of you know key friends and family and then you ask yourself and if I only have limited time what do I focus on so you do go through that soul searching process lastly I kind of wanted to go back to like lakeside school you and what you were in 10th grade he was in eighth grade and you were dumped what dumpster diving looking for codes right if that would have happened like now in 2011 in this age of you know apps and mobile devices and Facebook and Twitter and Google and Bing and everything else what do you think would an 8th grader and a 10th grader be looking for in that dumpster and what would they built well I'm not sure how many listings people make anymore much less coffee stain well coffee stained least in Seattle I'm sure there's still coffee stain but you know I think today the rate at which young people adopt new technology is breathtaking yeah and we were talking earlier about how do you how do you get them excited about about becoming programmers are developing things I was never there's so many kids today they're excited to spend hours online you know playing this this role-playing thing or this first-person shooter whatever I was interested in how those things how anything worked inside internally and all right how does it do graphics that look that great and those are the engineers in the future so we really have to put on our thinking caps and try to figure out I get you know kids today excited about being the creators of tomorrow I think I'm going to invite John up here I should say about away you know I I grew up here I went to Mount View High School I grew up like a few blocks from here and what's interesting is going through the museum downstairs and again the first two thousand history years of computer for me like you were there during the birth of the personal computer revolution I am somebody who was directly benefited from that revolution it was being able to basically create like a life for myself because the internet and computing was the way to go so I just wanted to personally thank you for the thing thank you the PC era one of the great game changers of modern life explore the history of computing and you'll connect the past to the future see you next time for the Computer History Museum presents revolutionaries

Channel: Computer History Museum

Views: 5,637

Rating: 3.974359 out of 5

Keywords: Paul, Allen, Paul Allen, Computer, History, Computer History, Computer History Museum, Microsoft, personal, computers, Bill, Gates, IBM, PC, Windows, BASIC

Id: vFogkclM46g

Length: 53min 14sec (3194 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 12 2012