It's pretty amazing to go from a world where computers were unheard of and very complex to where they're a tool of everyday life.
R&D generally has been a bipartisan thing, because in the IT space, in the medical space, the U.S., the benefits to ourselves and the world and our economy have been very, very clear. I'm hopeful we can make a very strong case there. Energy is actually harder; it takes more time to get a product, but if you do it's a very, very big market and the constraints of doing that in a clean way are more obvious all the time.
The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest. The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.
You can go overboard in how quickly you might expect new technologies to transform people's lives. But I very much believe the way software is used, the way information gets distributed, will be dramatically different within 10 years. There is fire to go with all this smoke.
The potential financial reward for building the 'next Windows' is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.
When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.
In the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the '90s.
There was a magical breakthrough when the computer became cheap and we could see that everyone could afford a computer.
If you give people tools, and they use their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.
