The Rare Humanism Behind Paul Allen's Technological Vision

In 1973, Paul Allen was a twenty-year-old technologist who, like many celebrated entrepreneurs, had taken a leave of absence from university to pursue work as a programmer. Over plates of pizza one summer day in Vancouver, Washington, he posed a fanciful question to his longtime classmate and soon-to-be business partner, Bill Gates: What if you could read headlines from a personal computer terminal without needing to get your hands on a copy of the day's paper? "Come on, Paul!" Gates replied. "It costs seventy-five dollars a month to rent a Teletype, and you can get a paper delivered for fifteen cents. How do you compete with that?"