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Paul Allen - Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft

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Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft: summary, description and annotation

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The virtual world he imagined is now as real as concrete...the very fabric of a twenty-first century that he and a tiny club of others literally invented. Shy, humble, brilliant...Paul Allens intellect and generosity of spirit are there on every page.
-Bono

Here is the tale of one of the most restlessly curious and broadly imaginative people of our times, which in simple and eloquent language tells how he changed those times forever.
-Jann S. Wenner, edtior and publisher, Rolling Stone

Pauls natural curiosity will always guide him into uncharted waters. Whether its a newfangled device called the personal computer; exploring the bottom of the sea or deep space; music, movies, and museums; or perhaps his most significant adventure so far-the human brain-two things are certain: It wont be the same afterward, and it will be an extraordinary journey.
-Peter Gabriel

Whenever you are given the opportunity to get behind the scenes with one of the greatest creative minds in the world of technology and innovation, you have to jump on it. Paul Allen has shown a unique ability and desire to contribute to and powerfully influence a broad spectrum of interests, including technology, science, medicine, the arts, and philanthropic endeavors.
-Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks and author of Win Forever

A rare glimpse into the mind of a great innovator; a chance to see Paul as only his friends have. The fascinating tale of an ordinary American boys rise to being one of the richest men in history.
-Carrie Fisher

Paul is a true adventurer in every sense of the word and, as a friend, he is both loyal and generous of spirit. His ideas have helped shaped the world we live in, and witnessing the way his mind works is like watching a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo: you have no idea how he does it, but it blows your mind.
-Dave Stewart

This son of Oklahoma, by way of Seattle, electrocuted a classmate, soldered his skin, gassed the family pet, purposely crashed systems, dove in dumpsters for coffee-stained printouts, and went on to create the engine that changed the world.
-Dan Aykroyd

Product Description

The entire conversation took five minutes. When it was over, Bill and I looked at each other. It was one thing to talk about writing a language for a microprocessor and another to get the job done . . . If wed been older or known better, Bill and I might have been put off by the task in front of us. But we were young and green enough to believe that we just might pull it off.

Paul Allen, best known as the cofounder of Microsoft, has left his mark on numerous fields, from aviation and science to rock n roll, professional sports, and philanthropy. His passions and curiosity have transformed the way we live. In 2007 and again in 2008, Time named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world.

It all started on a snowy day in December 1974, when he was twenty-one years old. After buying the new issue of Popular Electronics in Harvard Square, Allen ran to show it to his best friend from Seattle, Bill Gates, then a Harvard undergrad. The magazines cover story featured the Altair 8800, the first true personal computer; Allen knew that he and Gates had the skills to code a programming language for it. When Gates agreed to collaborate on BASIC for the Altair, one of the most influential partnerships of the digital era was up and running.

While much has been written about Microsofts early years, Allen has never before told the story from his point of view. Nor has he previously talked about the details of his complex relationship with Gates or his behind-closed- doors perspective on how a struggling startup became the most powerful technology company in the world. Idea Man is the candid and long-awaited memoir of an intensely private person, a tale of triumphant highs and terrifying lows.

After becoming seriously ill with Hodgkins lymphoma in 1982, Allen began scaling back his involvement with Microsoft. He recovered and started using his fortune-and his ideas-for a life of adventure and discovery, from the first privately funded spacecraft (SpaceShipOne) to a landmark breakthrough in neuroscience (the Allen Brain Atlas). His eclectic ventures all start with the same simple question: What should exist? As Allen has written:

To me, thats the most exciting question imaginable. . . . From technology to science to music to art, Im inspired by those whove blurred the boundaries, whove looked at the possibilities, and said, What if...? In my own work, Ive tried to anticipate whats coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to peoples lives in a meaningful way. . . . The varied possibilities of the universe have dazzled me since I was a child, and they continue to drive my work, my investments, and my philanthropy.

Idea Man is an astonishing true story of ideas made real.

Paul Allen: author's other books


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Table of Contents FOR MY PARENTS CHAPTER 1 OPPORTUNITY As I walked - photo 1
Table of Contents FOR MY PARENTS CHAPTER 1 OPPORTUNITY As I walked - photo 2
Table of Contents

FOR MY PARENTS
CHAPTER 1
OPPORTUNITY
As I walked toward Harvard Square on a December weekend afternoon in 1974, I had no inkling that my life was about to change. The weather was snowy and cold, and I was twenty-one years old and at loose ends. My girlfriend had left a few weeks earlier to return to our hometown of Seattle three thousand miles away. I was three semesters shy of graduation at Washington State University, where Id taken two breaks in the last two years. I had a dead-end job at Honeywell, a crummy apartment, and a 64 Chrysler New Yorker that was burning oil. Unless something came along by summer, Id be going back myself to finish my degree.
The one constant in my life those days was a Harvard undergraduate named Bill Gates, my partner in crime since wed met at Lakeside School when he was in eighth grade and I was in tenth. Bill and I learned how to dissect computer code together. Wed started one failed business and worked side by side on professional programming jobs while still in our teens. It was Bill who had coaxed me to move to Massachusetts with a plan to quit school and join him at a tech firm. Then he reversed field to return to college. Like me, he seemed restless and ready to try something new.
Bill and I kept casting about for a commercial project. We figured that wed eventually write some software, where we knew we had some talent. Over grinders or a pepperoni pie at the Harvard House of Pizza, we fantasized about our entrepreneurial future. One time I asked Bill, If everything went right, how big do you think our company could be?
He said, I think we could get it up to thirty-five programmers. That sounded really ambitious to me.
Since the dawn of integrated-circuit technology in the 1950s, forward thinkers had envisioned ever more powerful and economical computers. In 1965, in a journal called Electronics, a young research physicist named Gordon Moore made that prediction specific. He asserted that the maximum number of transistors in an integrated circuit would double each year without raising the chips cost. After cofounding Intel in 1968, Moore amended the rate of doubling to once every two yearsstill dramatic. Similar trends soon emerged in computer processing speed and disk storage capacity. It was a simple but profound observation that holds true to this day. Because of continual advances in chip technology, computers will keep getting markedly faster and cheaper.
The momentum of Moores law became more evident in 1969, a few months after Id met Bill. (I was sixteen then, just learning to program on a mainframe computer.) A Japanese company called Busicom asked Intel to design chips for a cheap handheld calculator that could undercut the competition. Busicom assumed that the new machine would require twelve integrated-circuit chips. But Ted Hoff, one of Intels electrical engineers, had a bold idea: to shave costs by consolidating the components of a fully functioning computer onto a single chip, what came to be called a microprocessor.
Before these new chips arrived on the scene, it took dozens or hundreds of integrated circuits to perform one narrow function, from traffic lights to gas pumps to printer terminals. Microwave-oven-size minicomputers, the machines that bridged mainframes and the microcomputers yet to come, followed the same formula: one chip, one purpose. But Hoffs invention was far more versatile. As Gordon Moore noted, Now we can make a single chip and sell it for several thousand different applications. In November 1971, Moore and Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, introduced the Intel 4004 microchip at a price of $200. The launch advertisement in Electronic News proclaimed a new era of integrated electronics.
Few people took notice of the 4004 early on, but I was a college freshman that year and had time to read every magazine and journal around. It was a fertile period for computers, with new models coming out almost monthly. When I first came across the 4004, I reacted like an engineer: What cool things could you do with this?
At first glance, Intels new chip looked like the core of a really nice calculator. But as I read on, I could see that it had all the digital circuitry of a true central processing unit, or CPU, the brains of any computing machine. The 4004 was no toy. Unlike application-specific integrated circuits, it could execute a program from external memory. Within the limits of its architecture, the worlds first microprocessor was more or less a computer on a chip, just as the ads said. It was the first harbinger of the day when computers would be affordable for everyone.
Four months later, as I continued to follow the chips, I came across the inevitable next step. In March 1972, Electronics announced the Intel 8008. Its 8-bit architecture could handle far more complex problems than the 4004, and it addressed up to sixteen thousand (16K) bytes of memory, enough for a fair-size program. The business world saw the 8008 as a low-budget controller for stoplights or conveyor belts. (In that vein, Bill and I would later use it in our fledgling enterprise in traffic flow analysis.) But I knew that this second-generation microchip could do much more, given the chance.
My really big ideas have all begun with a stage-setting developmentin this case, the evolution of Intels early microprocessor chips. Then I ask a few basic questions: Where is the leading edge of discovery headed? What should exist but doesnt yet? How can I create something to help meet the need, and who might be enlisted to join the crusade?
Whenever Ive had a moment of insight, it has come from combining two or more elements to galvanize a new technology and bring breakthrough applications to a potentially vast audience. A few months after the 8008 was announced, one of those brain waves came to me. What if a microprocessor could run a high-level language, the essential tool for programming a general-purpose computer?
It was plain to me from the outset that wed use BASIC (Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), the relatively simple language that Bill and I learned back at Lakeside in our first computer experience. The latest minicomputer from Digital Equipment Corporation, the PDP-11, already ran the more complex FORTRAN on as little as 16K of memory. While an 8008 machine would be quite a bit slower, I thought it should be able to perform most of the same functions at a fraction of the PDP-11s cost. Ordinary people would be able to buy computers for their offices, even their homes, for the very first time. An 8008 BASIC could swing open the gate to an array of applications for a limitless clientele.
And so I asked Bill, Why dont we do a BASIC for the 8008?
He looked at me quizzically and said, Because it would be dog-slow and pathetic. And BASIC by itself would take up almost all the memory. Theres just not enough horsepowerit would be a waste of time. After a moments reflection, I knew he was probably right. Then he said, When they come out with a faster chip, let me know.
Bill and I had already found a groove together. I was the idea man, the one whod conceive of things out of whole cloth. Bill listened and challenged me, and then homed in on my best ideas to help make them a reality. Our collaboration had a natural tension, but mostly it worked productively and well.
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