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PLAYBOY: Does privilege corrupt?

GATES: It can, I've noticed. It's easy to get spoiled by things that alienate you from what's important.

PLAYBOY: Are you afraid it would look bad to the people at Microsoft?

GATES: No, it's for me personally. I wouldn't want to get used to being waited on or driven around. Living in a way that is unique would be strange.

PLAYBOY: Do the rumors bother you?

GATES: Rarely. But its difficult. Microsoft being well known and having people know we do great software and getting people enthused about new things, that's an important part of Microsoft, challenging these new frontiers. It's natural for a company to be associated with its co-founder and leader. But as far as my personal life goes, its kind of a drawback. Even so, my experience with being exposed to the public is nothing like that of really well-known people.

PLAYBOY: Are you ready for celebrity?

GATES: No. I haven't even taken the introductory course.

PLAYBOY: Why not write your own book?

GATES: If I were to, I'd do it about the future instead of the past. When I reach a ripe old age, like 60 or something, then maybe I can be reflective.

PLAYBOY: You can set the record straight right now.

GATES: [Sighs] That some degree of oversimplication occurs is unavoidable. It's not like I'm complaining. Actually, my only complaint is that I wish somebody had written a decent book. And perhaps in the future somebody will. I just don't happen to like the ones that exist. They're incredibly inaccurate. Worse, they don't capture the excitement, the fun. What were the hard decisions? Why did things work out? Where was the luck? Where was the skill? You just don't get a sense of it. In fact, at one point we wanted to encourage a writer of reputation to do that, but we decided against it because we didn't want to put the time into it.

PLAYBOY: Don't you think people would want to read your Iacocca?

GATES: [Peeved] Now what does that mean? I think the answer is no to all such things. And when I do, I'll do it a hundred times better than any book done so far. But right now I don't want to be huger. I'm huger than I want to be. I'd like to shrink a little.

PLAYBOY: Then why are you talking with us?

GATES: For the message that personal computers can do neat things, that software is great stuff, that there's an exciting opportunity here and Microsoft is involved in it, that's a worthwhile message for Microsoft to get out. And if you want to just put Microsoft spokesman next to all those comments, that would be fine, except I know that people are more interested in human stories than they are in what technology can do for them.

PLAYBOY: Perhaps thats a strong clue to what should be done with emerging technologies.

GATES: That's true. We should let people communicate with other people.

PLAYBOY: Communicate with us: Who is Bill Gates?

GATES: I don't think theres a simple summary of anyone.

PLAYBOY: That said, give it a try.

GATES: [Laughs, then grudgingly, almost by rote] I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to gure out new things. I like the fact that if people really try they can figure out how to invent things that actually have an impact. I don't like to waste time where I'm not hearing new things or being creative.

PLAYBOY: Like these questions?

GATES: Some of them I've heard before. Certainly the history of the company has been widely discussed.

PLAYBOY: We mean questions about who you are.

GATES: Nobody's ever asked me the question in that form before. Who are you? Just get right to the meat of the issue. Lets make it multiple choice.

PLAYBOY: Make it a free-association test. It must conjure some thoughts.

GATES: [Long pause] No, I don't know if I'm thinking of anything.

PLAYBOY: Try again.

GATES: OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me Trey because I'm William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known and I'm also known. If they'd realized that would occur, they wouldn't have called me the same name. They thought I'd be unknown so they said, Hey, just use the same name, what the heck. When people say Bill, that's work, mostly, and I think of all the stuff I should be doing. When people call me Trey, I think of myself as the son. I think of myself as young. I think of my family, of just being a kid, growing up.

PLAYBOY: Do you like the public Bill that we've described to you?

GATES: I think the observations about me are all over the map, so it's hard to respond to that. When I got engaged, the Star said that I had a little contest for Melinda and that as soon as she finished the contest, I asked her to marry me. And then she said, Yes, oh yes! I find that humorous because it's so unreal and so ridiculous. The National Enquirer hired an astrologist Id never met to say various things about me. That struck me as ridiculous. Forbes does this whole thing about who's wealthy and what they think. I thought what they wrote about me was silly, but this year they had a nice article on my friend Warren Buffett that I thought was pretty good. So I guess it's easier reading about other people. My guideline has always been to avoid a focus on me personally. Not because of any deep, dark secrets. Rather just a sense of privacy. I guess it's kind of silly in a way.

PLAYBOY: People see what you have wrought and want to know what kind of person becomes a guy like you.

GATES: You mean if they have the same kind of personal life then maybe they'll become like me?

PLAYBOY: Come on. Isn't this whole information highway based on wanting and having access to more information?

GATES: Yeah, but there are lots of things you can be interested in.

PLAYBOY: And this is one of them.

GATES: But it's sort of prurient, isn't it?

PLAYBOY: Maybe only to the guy who's the center of attention.

GATES: When we have the information highway, I'll put it out there. Everybody who wants to pay, I don't know, one cent, can see what movies I'm watching and what books I'm reading and certain other information. If I'm still interesting, I'll rack up dollars as people access that part of the highway.

PLAYBOY: How many buildings are on this campus? Have you visited them all?

GATES: Twenty-five. Yeah, I've been to all of them, but there are a few I've been to only once.

PLAYBOY: Do you wander around here late at night?

GATES: Actually, I'll do that tonight. It's Friday and I have no plans.

PLAYBOY: Do you look in people's offices?

GATES: I see if people are around, see what they put up on the walls. I want a little sense of what the feeling is, how lively, how much people personalize things. They put industry articles up on the walls, ones that are particularly rude to us or particularly nice to us. They put up their progress, their number of bugs or new things that work. And you run into people. Even on a Friday night there'll be a bunch of people here, and I'll get a chance to ask what they're thinking.

PLAYBOY: Let's start to wrap up with a more global perspective. What should our attitude be toward the Japanese?

GATES: This Japanese-bashing stuff is so out of control. It's almost racist the way people have these stereotyped views of why Japanese companies are successful, without gathering many facts.

PLAYBOY: Even though they're in a slump now, why have the Japanese been so successful?

GATES: For good reasons. Great products. A long-term approach. Focus on engineering and what it takes to turn products around quickly. Being able to adapt to what's necessary to sell effectively in markets around the world. Believe me, they have some challenges ahead. But what they did with no natural resources and, essentially, no world power is a miracle.

PLAYBOY: And we did none of the above? What were our mistakes?

GATES: Actually, America has also done pretty well during this period. Some American companies made mistakes, and there are things we could do to improve our products. For instance, we could improve our education system. Also, get rid of short-term thinking. Focus on product engineering instead of financial engineering. We could fine-tune. But we've contributed a lot, too. America and Japan are the two leading world economies in terms of technology and innovative products. And in software, information-age technology and biotechnology, our second most important business, the U.S. has an amazing lead.

PLAYBOY: Our auto business is recovering. We're finally focused on making better cars instead of on holding down Japanese imports. But what in the American psyche let our lead slip away?

GATES: I don't think it's the American psyche. We don't have to dig that deep to find rot. The way those car companies managed their engineering process and their manufacturing process was wrong. It was out of date, and it took an unbelievable amount of time to get those processes reformed. It really took Ford to set the pace.

PLAYBOY: Does Microsoft follow the Japanese model?

GATES: There are aspects. Look, our workers are all Americans, so we don't sing company songs and things like that. The idea of taking a long-term approach, taking a global approach, many fine American companies have done that, and have that in common with the Japanese. But in no sense would I say were following some broad set of Japanese approaches.

PLAYBOY: How should our society think about the future?

GATES: More optimistically. As there is progress, which is partly advances in technology, in a certain sense the world gets richer. That is, the things we do that use a lot of resources and time can be done more efficiently. So people wonder, Will there be jobs? Will there be things to do? Until were educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do. And as society gets richer, we can choose to allocate the resources in a way that gives people the incentive to go out and do those unfinished jobs.

PLAYBOY: One story about you suggested that if Microsoft manages to write and deliver the software running inside the box it will, on the most basic levels, influence how we interact with the information highway. How does it feel to know you can have the same impact in the next 20 years as you had in the first 20?

GATES: Because we've had leadership products, we've had an opportunity to have a role. But this would have happened without us. Somebody would have done a standard operating system and promoted a graphics interface. We may have made it happen a little sooner. Likewise, the information highway is going to happen. If we play a major role it'll be because we were a little bit better a little bit sooner than others were.

PLAYBOY: If you don't take the next step, are you concerned about falling from the heights you've achieved?

GATES: There may be a better way to put it. If we weren't still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company. Fear should guide you, but it should be latent. I have some latent fear. I consider failure on a regular basis.

PLAYBOY: Personally, are you slowing down any?

GATES: I used to take no vacations. I used to stay up two nights in a row. I don't do that anymore.

PLAYBOY: What about keeping up with the technology? Overwhelming?

GATES: No. But it's harder than when I was young.

PLAYBOY: What's the last thing you didn't understand?

GATES: The quantum theory of gravity. [Laughs] Look at this office. Who can read all this stuff? Maybe tomorrow I'll return the hundreds of e-mail messages that are in my in-box right now.

PLAYBOY: People might find it hard to believe that you just barely keep up.

GATES: How would they know? I can tell them that's the truth. The same with the degree of success I have had. I never would have predicted it. I didn't set out to achieve some level of wealth or size of company. I remember in 1980 or 1981 looking at a list of people who had made a lot of money in the computer industry and thinking, Wow, that's amazing. But I never thought I'd be on that list. It's clear I was wrong. I'm on the list, at least temporarily.

PLAYBOY: Temporarily?

GATES: I'm waiting for the anticlimax. I hate anticlimax. In terms of being able to do new and interesting things, I would hate to lose that. That's partly why I work as hard as I do trying to stay on top of things.

PLAYBOY: Is the one success of Microsoft enough for you?

GATES: Microsoft has had many, many successful products. It's like saying to somebody whos been married 50 years, Well, hell, you've had only one wife. What's wrong with you? You think you can do only one? I mean, I'm committed to one company. This is the industry I've decided to work in.

PLAYBOY: An interesting metaphor you choose, the wife thing.

GATES: You're welcome to print it.

PLAYBOY: Put it this way: You're 38, a billionaire, you co-founded the world's largest software company and transformed the industry. What do you want to do for an encore if there is one?

GATES: Encore implies that life is not a continuous process, that there's some sort of finite number of achievements that defines your life. For me, there are a lot of exciting things in front of me at Microsoft, things that we want to see if we can make happen with technology. There are great people here who are fun to work with. And in the next decade the most interesting industry by far will be information technology, broadly dened. We have a chance to make a major contribution to that. Its very competitive. We won't know until late in that period whether we did it right or not. I'm excited about that. And were still on a pretty steep curve in terms of making even better word processors or figuring out how an electronic encyclopedia or movie guide should work, guring out what sort of tools for collaboration we should offer to people. That will be my focus for the foreseeable future.

PLAYBOY: What about tomorrow? Any plans for Saturday?

GATES: [Smiles] Work.

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