经典英语美文 （79）比尔·盖茨在清华大学的演讲(1)
It’s great to be here and have a chance to share some of my excitement with you.
I got involved with computers at 18.And the computer was a very limited teletype that had to be connected through a phone lineup to a mainframe like computer, but my friends and I became fascinated with understanding what the computer can do,what was the future, and how would it be used. When we found out about chip technology,and the miracle of being able to improve the power of the chip exponentially,we realized that computers had a very bright future.We spent a lot of our time writing software because we loved writing software,because we thought that the software being written by a lot of big hardware companies wasn’t as good as what we could do.
I was 19 when I realized that if I wanted to be the first to do a software company for these new cheap computers,I needed to get my friends together and start right away,so Microsoft became the first company doing software for these new machines.Our vision was a computer on every desk and in every home. In the last 20 years,that vision is certainly becoming a reality. If we had to change it today,we would simply add thatnow we also want to have a computer in every pocket,every car – many other places that we had not thought about when we first started doing development.I believe software is the key element that really unlocks the power of all this technology,and the idea of making it easy to find information, easy to create information, easy to communicate with other people.Software is at the center of that, and so software will be the fastest growing industry in the worldand one that will create lots and lots of great jobs.Certainly here in China the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of great jobs should be very exciting because there is aglobal shortage in terms of computer skills.
The personal computer revolution got started in 1975, that’s when I left college and started Microsoft.These last 22 years have really been amazing, every prediction we’ve made about improvements have all come true.As we look ahead, that pace of innovation is not slowing down, in fact if anything it’s speeding up.Very high speed processors like 300MHz Pentiums, or new 64 bit processors that we’re already developing Windows NT for;incredible storage capacity, which will let us store, not just data, but also digital video as well;great screen technology to create a tablet like device that would be good enough for reading and writing;advanced graphics and now the ability to connect computers together at very high speed.
The Internet is the way that all these machines can be connected together. And those standards, and the improvement of those standards, is very very important. Some people like to think about how the computer industry compares to other industries. I’ve shown before what the cost of the typical car was in 1980 in US,and that rose up to be about from 8,000 to 19,000 today, and likewise cereal has increased in price. How does that compare to PCs? If the same model was followed for PCs, can buy a car for 27 cents and cereal forless than one cent, so there’s no other area of the economy that has this rapid improvement, and people just aren’t used to it. You almost have to tell people, “What would you do if Internet computing power was free.” Because that’s what we’ll be able to deliver with all these improvements.
Microsoft’s vision of computing is global computing. We see PCs connected to the Internet making the world a smaller place, and that’s positive in so many ways: to bulid understanding between people, to share research in key science areas, including medicine,to allow world commerce to work very well. And the Internet is driving this already. Microsoft has set up cooperations around the world, and we are very pleased with the success we’re having here in China. We are doing significant software development on products here,and that will continue to increase, and key for us is having very very high quality software people, andwe’ve been lucky to hire a great number of people from this university. Really I’d say that the core of the teams we’ve put together have come from here, and I’ve listed some of those employees here, and we certainly hope that in the future this list will increase dramatically,and the quality of our work continuesto rise.(To be continued)
十分高兴来到这里并有机会与诸位分享我的兴奋之情。
我是在18岁的时候开始接触电脑的。当时的电脑只是一台功能很有限的电传打字机，并需要通过电话线连接在一台类似于大型机< 主机）的计算机上。但是,我的朋友们和我都 被电脑深深地吸引住了。我们急于想知道，电脑能够做些什么，它的前景怎样，并且人们将如何使用电脑。当我们发现了芯片技术，以及人们可以奇迹般地以几何级的速度增强芯片的功能时，我们认识到电脑的前景无限广阔。我们花了很多时间编写软件，因为我们喜欢编写软件，并且因为我们觉得许多大的硬件公司编写的软件不如我们编写得好。
在我19岁的时候，我认识到如果我想要创办第一家专为新型的便宜的电脑开发软件的公司，就必须召集我的朋友，然后马上开始行动，于是微软作为第一家软件公司就此诞生了。我们当时的设想是让每一张办公桌上、每一个家庭里都拥有一台电脑。在过去的20年当中，这个设想无疑变成了现实。假如我们今天要修改一下这个设想的话，我们只是想补充一点，那就是现在我们还想让每个人的口袋里，每辆车中，以及在我们起初开始发展时没想到的许多其他地方都摆放一台电脑。我相信，软件是能够真正幵发电脑技术潜力的关键因素，并是使电脑帮助人们更简便地査询信息、创造信息、与他人交流信息的好方法。软件处子其核心地位，因此，软件将成为世界上发展最快的产业，并且它将创造许许多多巨大的就业机会。在中国，当然也不例外，数以十万计的绝佳的就业机会将是十分激动人心的，因为全球都急需计算机领域的人才。个人电脑的革命起步于1975年,那时候我刚刚离开大学并开始创办微软。过去的这22年实在令人惊讶，我们关于电脑发展的一切预言都变成了现实。放眼未来，我们发现，革新的步伐非但没有减慢，而且事实上还在加快。超高速处理器，如300兆赫的奔腾处理器或新的64位（比特）处理器，我们已经在为它们开发Windows NT揉作系统；令人难以置信的存储容量，不但可以存储数据，还可以存储数字视频；妙不可言的屏幕技术能创造出一种适干读和写的刻录装置；此外还有先进的图像技术以及现有的电脑非常快速的联网能力。
因特网是能够使所有电脑联接起来的方法。至于这些标准及其完善,是非常非常重要的。有些人想知道计算机产业较之其他产业是怎样的一种状况。以前我曾经指出一辆典型的汽车1980年在美国的价格，如今这个价格已经涨到大概8000至19000美元;同样,谷物也在涨价。与它们相比，个人电脑的价格如何呢？如果按照个人电脑价格的下跌方式计算,你只要花27美分就可以买到一辆汽车了，而谷物则还不到1美分，所以没有什么经济领域有电脑业这样快的发展速度，只是人们还不太习惯而已。你差点儿就得告诉人们如果因特网免费，你打算怎么办呢？”因为随着电脑业的发展，我们将能够做到这一点。
微软公司在计算机业发展的前景是全球计算机化。我们看到，联上因特网的个人电脑正在使世界变小，而这在许多方面会起到积极作用：架起人与人之间理解的桥梁，分享包括医学在内的重点科学领域的研究成果，保证世界贸易的顺利进行。而因 特网正在朝着这个方向努力。微软公司也和世界各地的人们建立了合作关系，并且我们对于和中国的合作成功感到十分窩兴。我们在中国的软件发展非常迅速，而且速度还将继续提升。对我们来讲，其关键是要拥有高素质的软件工程师，而我们很幸运地从贵校聘请到了很多人才。的确，我想说，我们这个团队的核心成员都毕业于贵校。我在此列出了其中一些雇员的名单，当然我们希望将来这个名单上的名字会大大增加，而我们的工作质量也会进一步提高。（未完待续）
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