Braintrust

Bill Gates and his lieutenants at Microsoft share one common trait - they all want to have a major impact on history. In 1991, Microsoft Research was launched, with the objective of discovering new technologies that would change fundamentally the way we work, live and think. This work provides a look inside Microsoft Research and the technologies (both secret and public) under development there. It describes the pursuit of what Gates refers to as "the next big thing" - an elusive breakthrough technology that will drive the next evolution of the digital world we live in. At the forefront of this annual $200 million investment - with sites in Seattle, San Francisco, Cambridge and Beijing - is the vision of a computer that can see, hear, speak, and even reason and act on our behalf. Through the "braintrust" that is Microsoft Research, Gates plans to enable computers to become much more than merely knowledge tools, but rather electronic partners in virtually everything that we do.