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E-Mail from Bill Gates
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Connecting to the Literature
This excerpt from "E-Mail from Bill Gates" tells of one writer's unex-pected e-mail correspondence. Do you use e-mail? Think about the forms of communication you use, and whether or not a famous person would be likely to respond in any of those forms.
Background
While preparing an article on Bill Gates, John Seabrook sent an e-mail to the famous computer whiz. To Seabrook's surprise, Gates responded, and the interview was conducted almost entirely through e-mail.
Example
composition book standards
like "It may have come to your attention."
Comparison there was a pause after each
response to think; it was like football players huddling up after each play.
Contrast I give out my home phone number to almost no one but my e-mail address is known
very broadly.
Restatement How about immortality— being remembered for a thousand years after you're dead ...
Literary Analysis
Magazine Article
A magazine article is a short nonfiction text written in prose. It may present or explore ideas, insights, explanations, or facts.
John Seabrook's magazine article explains a technical subject of cur-rent interest. It also gives insight into one of the key figures involved in
the tonic_ As you read. notice how Seabrook alternates explanations and
insights. Use the following focus questions to guide your reading:
1. What information and insights does this article give about Bill Gates? 2. What was the author's purpose for writing this article?
Connecting Literary Elements
A magazine article is a form of journalism—the gathering, writing, and editing of current information to be presented in the media. Media include:
• magazines and newspapers • radio and television
• Web sites and other internet resources
Media text is quickly outdated. When gathering information from media sources, check the date and consider whether it is recent.
Reading Strategy
Using Context Clues
Use context clues—the words in the surrounding text—to make an informed guess about the meaning of unfamiliar words and terms.
At the moment, the best way to communicate with another per-son on the information highway is to exchange electronic mail: to write a message on a computer and send it through the telephone lines into someone else's computer.
Here, the context (in italics) gives a definition of "electronic mail." As you read, look for the types of context clues shown on the chart. Record unfamiliar words and technical terms on a similar chart.
Vocabulary Development
interaction (in' tar ak" shen) n. actions etiquette (et' i kit) n. rules for that affect each other (p. 55) behavior (p. 56)
misinterpret (mis' in ter - prit) v. to spontaneously (span to na as le)
understand or explain incorrectly adv. naturally, without planning
(p. 55) (p. 56)
intimate (in' to met) adj. private or personal (p. 56)
from
E — MAIL FROM
BILL GATES
John Seabrook
A
t the moment, the best way to communicate with another person on the information highways is to exchange electronic mail: to write a message on a computer and send it through the tele-phone lines into someone else's computer. In the future, people will send each other sound and pictures as well as text, and do it in real time, 2 and improved technology will make it possible to have rich, human electronic exchanges, but at present E-mail is the closest thing we have to that. Even now, E-mail allows you to meet and communicate with people in a way that would be impos-sible on the phone, through the regular mail, or face to face, as I discovered while I was working on this story. Sitting at my computer one day, I realized that I could try to communicate with Bill Gates, the chairman and co-founder of the software giant Microsoft, on the information highway. At least, I could send E-mail to his electronic address, which is widely available, not tell anyone at Microsoft I was doing it, and see what happened. I wrote:Dear Bill,
I am the guy who is writing the article about you for The New Yorker. It occurs to me that we ought to be able to do some of the work through e-mail. Which raises this fascinat-ing question—What kind of understandfascinat-ing of another person can e-mail give you? .. .
You could begin by telling me what you think is unique about e-mail as a form of communication.
Reading Strategy Using Context Clues
What clues could help someone unfamiliar with computers figure out the meaning of "logged on"?
John
I hit "return," and the computer said, "mail sent." I walked out to the kitchen to get a drink of water and played with the cat for a while, then came back and sat at my computer. Thinking that I was probably wasting money, I nevertheless logged on again and entered my password. "You have mail," the computer said.
I typed "get mail," and the computer got the following:
1. information highway network of computers and file servers that allows for the rapid exchange of electronic information.
2. in real time in actual time (with little delay between the moment of sending and the moment of receiving the sound, picture, and text).
From: Bill Gates <billg@microsoft.com > Ok, let me know if you get this email.
According to my computer, eighteen minutes had passed between the time I E-mailed Bill and he E-mailed me back. His message said:
E-mail is a unique communication vehicle for a lot of reasons. However email is not a substitute for direct interaction. . . .
There are people who I have corresponded with on email for months before actually meeting them—people at work and otherwise. If someone isn't saying something of interest its easier to not respond to their mail than it is not to answer the phone. In fact I give out my home phone number to almost no one but my email address is known very broadly. I am the only person who reads my email so no one has to worry about embarrassing themselves or going around people when they send a message. Our email is completely secure. . . .
Email helps out with other types of communication. It allows you to exchange a lot of information in advance of a meeting and make the meeting far far more valuable. . . .
Email is not a good way to get mad at someone since you can't interact. You can send friendly messages very easily since those are harder to misinterpret.
We began to E-mail each other three or four times a week. I would have a question about something and say to myself, "I'm going to
A Critical Viewing
What does the picture suggest about communication and technology? [Interpret]
interaction (in' tar al( shen ) n. actions that affect each other
misinterpret (mis' in tut" prit) v. to understand or explain incorrectly
4Reading Check
What happened after the author e-mailed Bill Gates?
E-mail Bill about that," and I'd write him a message and get a one-or two-page message back within twenty-four hours, sometimes much sooner. At the begirming of our electronic relationship, I would wake up in the middle of the night and lie in bed wondering if I had E-mail from Bill. Generally, he seemed to write messages at night, sleep (maybe), then send them the next morning. We were intimate in a curious way, in the sense of being wired into each other's minds, but our contact was elaborately stylized, like ballroom dancing.
In some ways, my E-mail relationship with Bill was like an ongo-ing, monthlong conversation, except that there was a pause after each response to think; it was like football players huddling up after each play. There was no beginning or end to Gates' messages—no time wasted on stuff like "Dear" and "Yours"—and I quickly corrected this etiquette breach in my own messages. Nor were there any fifth-grade-composition-book standards like "It may have come to your attention that" and "Looking forward to hearing from you." Social niceties are not what Bill Gates is about. Good spelling is not what Bill Gates is about, either. He never signed his messages to me, but sometimes he put an "&" at the end, which, I learned, means "Write back" in E-mail language. After a while, he stopped putting the "&," but I wrote back anyway. He never addressed me by name. Instead of a letterhead, there was this:
Sender: billg@microsoft.com
Received: from netmail.microsoft.com by dub-img-2.compuserve.com (5.67/5.930129sam) id AA03768; Wed, 6 Oct 93 14:00:51-0400
Received: by netmail.microsoft.com (5.65/25—eef) id AA27745; Fri, 8 Oct 93 10:56:01-0700
Message-Id:
<9310081756.AA27745@netmail.microsoft.com > X-Msmail-Message-Id: 15305A55
X-Msmail-Conversation-Id: 15305A55 From: Bill Gates <billg@microsoft.com > To: 73124.1524@CompuServe.COM
I sometimes felt that this correspondence was a game I was ing with Gates through the computer, or maybe a game I was play-ing against a computer. What is the right move? What question will get me past the dragon and into the wizard's star chamber, where the rich information is stored? I had no idea where Gates was when he wrote to me, except that once he told me he was on a "think week" at his family's summer place on Hood Canal. I could not tell whether he was impatient or bored with my questions and was merely answering them because it served his interest. Because we couldn't talk at the same time, there was little chance for the con-versation to move spontaneously. On the other hand, his answers meant more, in a certain way, being written, than answers I would have received on the phone. I worried that he might think I was
intimate (in' to mat) adj.
private or personal
etiquette (et i kit) n. rules for behavior
Reading Strategy
Using Context Clues What context clues help you guess the meaning of the term letterhead?
spontaneously (span to ne as le ) adv.
naturally, without planning
being "random" (a big putdown at Microsoft) because I jumped from topic to topic. I sometimes wondered if I was actually communicating with Bill Gates. How hard would it be for an assistant to write these messages? Or for an intelligent agent to do it?
I wrote a message titled "What motivates you?":
You love to compete, right? Is that where your energy comes from—love of the game? I wonder how it feels to win on your level. How much do you fear losing? How about immortality— being remembered for a thousand years after you're dead—does that excite you? How strong is your desire to improve people's lives (by providing them with better tools for thinking and com-municating)? Some driven people are trying to heal a wound or to recover a loss. Is that the case with you?
Gates wrote back:
Its easy to understand why I think I have the best job around because of day to day enjoyment rather than some grand long term deep psychological explanation. It's a lot of fun to work with very smart people in a competitive environment. . . . We get to hire the best people coming out of school and give them challeng-ing jobs. We get to try and figure out how to sell software in every part of the world. Sometimes our ideas work very well and some-times they work very poorly. As long as we stay in the feedback loop and keep trying it's a lot of fun.
It is pretty cool that the products we work on empower individ-uals and make their jobs more interesting. It helps a lot in inventing new software ideas that I will be one of the users of the software so I can model what's important. . . .
Just thinking of things as winning is a terrible approach. Success comes from focusing in on what you really like and are good at—not challenging every random thing. My original vision of a personal computer on every desk and every home will take more than 15 years to achieve so there will have been more than 30 years since I first got excited about that goal. My work is not like sports where you actually win a game and its over after a short period of time.
Besides a lot of luck, a high energy level and perhaps some IQ I think having an ability to deal with things at a very detailed level and a very broad level and synthesize 3 between them is probably the thing that helps me the most. This allows someone to take deep technical understanding and figure out a business strategy that fits together with it.
It's ridiculous to consider how things will be remembered after you are dead. The pioneers of personal computers including Jobs, Kapor, Lampson, Roberts, Kaye, 4 are all great people but
3. synthesize to form by bringing together separate parts.
4. Jobs, ... Kaye important developers of the computer and software industries.
Reading Strategy Using Context Clues
What words restate the meaning of immortality?
AteadiaggChatk
Why does Bill Gates think he has "the best job around"?
I don't think any of us will merit an entry in a history book. I don't remember being wounded or losing something big so I don't think that is driving me. I have wonderful parents and great siblings. I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in (although I will be moving across the lake when my new house is done). I can't remember any major disappointments. I did figure out at one point that if I pursued pure mathe-matics it would be hard to make a major contribution and there were a few girls who turned me down when I asked them out.
At the end of one message, I wrote:
This reporting via e-mail is really fascinating and I think you are going to come across in an attractive way, in case
you weren't sure of that. Gates wrote:
I comb my hair everytime before I send email hoping to appear attractive. I try and use punctuation in a friendly way also. I send :) and never :(.
1. Respond: Would you like to meet Bill Gates? Why or why not? 2. (a) Recall: Why does Seabrook first send e-mail to Bill Gates?
(b) Analyze: What does Seabrook accomplish by letting
Gates speak for himself?
3. (a) Recall: What does Seabrook learn about the etiquette of sending and receiving e-mail? (b) Compare and
Contrast: How is Seabrook's first e-mail to Gates similar
to and different from later e-mails? (c) Infer: What does Gates's e-mail style reveal about him?
4. (a) Speculate: Do you think Seabrook would use this
method of communication to conduct other interviews?
(b) Support: Why or why not?
5. (a) Apply: Why is Bill Gates of current interest? (b) Evaluate:
Based on the topic of the article, how important is the date of the article? Explain. (c) Extend: What media sources could you use to find information about Bill Gates's most recent activities and accomplishments?
6. Take a Stand: Do you think that "basic computer skills"
should be a required class? Why or why not?
John Seabrook
(b. 1959)
John Seabrook grew up in a toma-to-farming commu-nity in New Jersey. Years later, when writing about biotechnology and a new kind of tomato, he mentioned this boyhood experience. Readers' reac-tions made him realize that science writers need to add a personal touch. Bill Gates (b. 1955) As co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates helped launch the computer revolution. His phenomenal success and astounding wealth have made him a legend in the business world. In 2000 Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of
Microsoft to become chair-man and chief software architect of the company.
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Review and Assess
Think about the Selection
Television Newspaper Internet
Speed
Problems Use of visuals
How easy to deliver to many people at once
Review and Assess
Literary Analysis
Magazine Article
1.
List facts about e-mail and details about Bill Gates that you learned from this magazine article. Record them on a chart like this.Facts About E-Mail Details About Bill Gates
2. What do you think was Seabrook's purpose for writing this article?
Connecting Literary Elements
3. Identify two topics related to this article that a journalist might investigate.
4. Complete a chart like the one below to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different media.
Reading Strategy
Using Context Clues
For each of the following sentences, give the meaning of the italicized words. Explain the context clues that help you determine the meaning.
5. "Our contact was elaborately stylized, like ballroom dancing."
6. "I have wonderful parents and great siblings."
Extend Understanding
7. Career Connection: (a) What personal qualities do you think are useful for people who work in the computer field? (b) What academic subjects should a person study to prepare for a career in computers?
Quick Review
A magazine article is a short, informational work of nonfiction published in a periodical. To review a magazine article, see page 53.
Journalism is informational writing about real people, places, events, and ideas of current interest.
Media forms include magazines, newspapers, television, radio, and the Internet.
To review journalism and media, see page 53.
Context clues are words and phrases from the surrounding text that help you figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. To review context clues, see page 53.
Net
www.phschool.com
Take the interactive self-test online to check your understanding of the selection.
Integrate Language Skills
Vocabulary Development Lesson
Word
Analysis: Latin Prefix
inter-
The Latin prefix inter- in interaction means "between" or "among." On your paper, write the correct word in each blank by adding inter- to one of these words:
Concept Development: Antonyms
Antonyms are words with opposite meanings, such as happy and sad or light and dark. Copy each sentence. Underline the antonym of the italicized word.national state active
1. An ? highway system runs from California to Maine.
2. Many people play ? video games. 3. E-mail speeds up ? communications.
Spelling Strategy
Before adding the suffix -tion, you will prob-ably have to drop the final letter or letters of the base word:
interact + -tion
=
interaction.On your paper, add -don to the following verbs.
1. connect 2. relate 3. reflect
Grammar
Lesson
Pronouns and Antecedents
Pronouns are words that take the place of a
noun or nouns. Some common pronouns include we, he, they, I, each other, it, and us.
The noun to which a pronoun refers is the pronoun's antecedent. Many pronouns must have an antecedent in order for their meaning to be clear. In the following example, the pronoun those refers to the antecedent messages.
Example: You can send friendly messages easily since those are harder to misinterpret.
1. Use symbols and words that are easy to understand so that the receiver does not misinterpret your message.
2. It is strange to have such intimate corre-spondence with such a public figure. 3. I had hoped we could communicate
spon-taneously, but I had to settle for planned exchanges.
4. His messages followed e-mail etiquette, but mine contained examples of bad form.
For more practice, see page R28, Exercise B.
Practice Copy each of the following sentences. Circle the pronoun. Underline the antecedent.
1. Seabrook e-mailed Gates to ask him questions. 2. Seabrook and Gates corresponded because
they were working on an interview.
3. The ability to recognize problems and find solutions for them is important.
Writing Application Revise the following pas-sage so that it is clear to which noun he refers. Replace some uses of he with a name.
Seabrook wrote to Gates and he wrote back to him. He told him that he was writing his article about him. He wrote back to him.
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1/16
Prentice Hall Writing and Grammar Connection: Chapter 14, Section 2 60 ♦ Coming of AgeNot Parallel: E-mail transmits in moments; someone
receiving conventional mail might wait days.
Parallel: E-mail takes moments; conventional mail takes days.
Writing Lesson
Comparison of Forms of Communication
Choose two forms of communication, such as e-mail and conventional letter-writing, and write a short essay comparing and contrasting them.
.444^g Choose the two frsrty, of r V V forms ,11 communication you will t,f-Nrnrarc. List y vs, vr 111 ,l/11LELA.L..,• ways in which these forms are alike and different.
Drafting Organize your comparison point by point. Describe a feature of
e-mail, then describe the same or related feature of your other form of communication. When you compare or contrast ideas or
features of equal weight, use parallel structure—similar or repeated grammatical forms and structures.
Revising Look for passages where the similarities or differences would be shown more sharply if you used parallel structure. Revise to produce parallel structure.
Model: Parallel Structure
Each part of the revised sentence has the same structure. This makes the difference between the two types of mail stand out.
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Prentice Hall Writing and Grammar Connection: Chapter 8, Section 3Extension Activities
Listening and Speaking Do an oral presentation on the history of forms of communication, such as the telephone, facsimile machine, or e-mail. First, tell about early versions. Then, describe the development. Conclude by explaining how the system functions today and what experts predict for the future. Follow these tips:
1. Use strong action verbs such as transmit,
communicate, and deliver.
2. Use active voice rather than passive voice. Passive: The file is stored on the drive. Active: The drive stores the file.
Research and Technology Work with a group to
produce a manual explaining how to use e-mail. Each group member can research and explain one function, such as how to develop an e-mail address book or how to save a message. Organize the topics of your manual in a logical sequence and prepare a table of contents.
www.phschool.com Go online for an additional research activity using the Internet.
'Title
Introductory Text Tone of Voice Online Table 1
Table 2
Flame On/Flame Off Looking Good Online
READING INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS
Magazine Articles
About Magazine Articles
Magazines are a form of print media. Although most are published monthly or weekly, some appear quarterly, or four times a year. Magazines either appeal to certain special interest groups (such as gardeners, skiers, or opera lovers), or they offer feature stories on current topics to a general audience with more detail than newspapers can give. Magazines often contain opinions as well as facts.
Reading Strategy
Headings
Informational text in magazines, newspapers, and textbooks is often divided into sections. Headings, or heads, usually stand out from the reg-ular text in one of the following ways:
• color • boldface • larger print
• placement on page
Heads organize the material in an easy-to-follow pattern, which helps readers find information quickly. They also visually break up the type on a page so that the article is easy to read. Look, for instance, at the heads in "How to Be Polite Online." The first three paragraphs of the article intro-duce the article. Then, the first head, "Tone of voice online," tells the reader what information will be covered in the first section. Use headings to help you organize notes and summaries as outlined on the chart below.
Section Summary
Smile; laugh; "I'm joking" Frown; sadness; "Bummer" Variant of :-) or "Have a nice day"
Wink; denotes a pun or sly joke
Yelling or screaming; or :-0
completely shocked :-() Can't (or won't) stop talking :-D Big, delighted grin :-P Sticking out your tongue :)
:-] or :-) Sarcastic smile
%-) Confused but happy %-( Confused and unhappy
Can't decide how to feel; no feelings either way Kiss
{} or [] Hug
{{{***}}} Hugs and kisses
HOW
to
Be
Polite
Online
from
Netiquette
VIRGINIA SHEA
The truth is that computer network-ing is still in its infancy. Probably nothing illustrates this more clearly than the "ASCII' jail": 90% of net-work communications are still limit-ed to plain old ASCII text—that is, the characters of the alphabet, the numerals 0 through 9, and the most basic punctuation marks. It's bad enough that multimedia communi-cations have not been implemented in most of cyberspace. 2 Most of the time you can't even put a word in bold or italics!
Because people cannot see or hear you in cyberspace, you need to pay close attention to the style of your electronic communications if you hope to make a good impression there.The style of electronic cornmu-nications encompasses everything
Table 1: Emoticons
about your correspondence except its content, from your use of network conventions like "smileys" and "sigs" to the number of characters per line in your email messages.
Style considerations are influ-enced by several of the rules of Netiquette, especially Rule 4,
Respect other people's time, and
Rule 5, Make yourself look good online. It doesn't matter how bril-liant your messages are if they're formatted in such a way that no one can read them.
Tone of voice online The fact that most network interactions are limited to written words can be the source of misunderstandings. Fortunately, clever network users have had years to deal with this. They've cre-ated a shorthand to help communi-cate the tone that you'd otherwise get from the other person's voice, facial expressions, and gestures. These shorthand expressions are known as smileys or emoticons. They're easy to figure out once you get the hang of it. Just remember that they're all sideways faces.
See Table 1 for a list of the most commonly used emoticons. There are whole books about smileys for those who are interested, including the enjoyable Smiley Dictionary by Seth Godin.
1. ASCII acronym for American Standard
Code for Information Interchange, a stan-dard computer code used to assist the interchange of information among various types of data-processing equipment.
2. cyberspace popular term for the
border-less world of computers and telecommuni-cation on the Internet.
Table 2: Abbreviations BTW By the way IMHO IMNSHO IOW In my humble opinion In my not so humble opinion In other words IRL In real life ITRW In the real world
LOL Laughing out loud OTF On the floor (laughing) ROTFL Rolling on the floor
laughing WRT With regard to YMMV Your mileage may vary <g> or <G>
<bg> 1
Grin Big grin
People also use abbreviations to express emotional states or to qualify what they're saying. See Table 2 for a list of common abbreviations.
The "FLAME ON/FLAME OFF" notifier
When you really want to run off at the keyboard—but you want your read-ers to know that you know that you're not expressing yourself in your usual measured, reasoned manner—you need to let them know that you know that you're flaming.' So before you begin your rant, simply enter the words FLAME ON. Then rant away. When you're done, write FLAME OFF and resume normal discourse. Looking good online One of the neat things about computers is that they let us use all kinds of special effects in our documents that we didn't even dream of back in the days of typewrit-ers (if you're old enough to remember those days). But when you're commu-nicating online, in most cases it's back to the typewriter as far as effects go. Even if your mail system lets you use boldface, italics, and tabs, there's no guarantee that your correspondent's system will understand them. At worst, your communication will turn into unreadable gibberish.
What to do?
• Forget about boldface, italics, tabs, and font changes. Never use any effect you couldn't get on an old-fashioned typewriter. In fact, you can't even use all of those. Underlining won't work, for example. Nor can you use the old "required backspace" trick to put a diacritical mark 4 (a tilde or an accent mark, for example) over another character.
• Most systems won't read the diacritical marks anyway, so just leave them out. If you feel an accent mark is absolutely neces-sary, type an apostrophe after the letter the accent would have gone over.
• Use only ASCII characters. This includes all 26 letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case), the numerals 0 through 9, and most commonly used punc-tuation marks. For any publish-ing mavens out there, however, it excludes em dashes ("—"), en dashes ("—"), and bullets. • Limit your line length to 80
characters, or better yet, 60 characters.
Otherwise, your lines may break in weird places and your readers will have to wade through notes that look like this.
Believe me,
it gets annoying after a very short while.
• NEVER TYPE YOUR NOTES IN ALL CAPS, LIKETHIS. It's rude— like shouting constantly. And, like constant shouting, it makes people stop listening. All caps may be used, IN MODERATION, for emphasis.
• To indicate italics, you may *surround the material to be italicized with asterisks.*
3. flaming slang for "ranting."
4. diacritical (di a krit ik al) mark mark added to a letter or symbol to show its pronunciation.
Text is organized into chunks using bullets and tables.
Check Your Comprehension
1. What elements contribute to the style of electronic communication? 2. What are some possible online substitutes for voice, facial
expres-sions, and gestures?
3. Why is it suggested that you not type in all capitals or write lines longer than sixty characters?
Applying the Reading Strategy
Headings
4. What are three main ideas identified by the headings in this article?
5. What information do you learn from Table 1?
6. What is the abbreviation for "In other words"? How do you know?
Activity
Use Online Etiquette
Many products now carry e-mail addresses so that customers can give feedback online. Find the e-mail addresses for two companies that produce products you use. Send an e-mail to each company, expressing your satis-faction or dissatissatis-faction with the product. Follow the etiquette outlined in "How to Be Polite Online." Tell the class when and if you receive a reply.
Comparing Informational Materials
Compare Articles
This article, and the article from "E-Mail from Bill Gates," both discuss the way people communicate through e-mail. Each writer, however, has a unique purpose that affects the scope, or range, of ideas that are covered and the way those ideas are organized. In "E-Mail from Bill Gates," the author's purpose is to give you a glimpse through e-mail at a famous com-puter whiz. The author of
"How to Be Polite Online" wants to inform readers about the do's and don'ts of e-mailing. Fill out a chart like the one shown here to find similarities and differ-ences between the two texts.
E-mail from How to Be Bill Gates Polite Online
Main subject of article
Three main ideas
Types of details included
