Two books about the fall of I.B.M. and Gates’ role in it have recently appeared—“Big Blues,” by Paul Carroll, and “Computer Wars,” by Charles H. Ferguson and Charles R. Morris—and an occasional chill runs up the spine of anyone reading them at the ease with which Gates eviscerated men much older and more experienced than he was. “I kept wanting to... See more

At Microsoft’s main office, in Redmond, a suburb of Seattle, I saw a demo of an early version of the company’s operating software for the information-highway machine, in which the user points at the TV screen with a remote control, clicks onto icons, and selects from menus. I heard a lot about “intelligent agents,” which will at first be animated... See more