Bill Gates’ Internet predictions come true at Saudi tech forum
Fred Aminga in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote way back in January 1996 an essay dubbed “Content is King” which was widely circulated after being published on the firm’s website.
A quarter century later, nothing is far from the truth, and his prediction has come to pass as kids as young as five now command millions of viewership becoming internet sensations from online clips on platforms like TikTok or Youtube.
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting,” Gates wrote twenty six years ago. Gates’s This prediction mirrors Saudi Arabia’s move to task its Digital Content Council to announce Ignite, a new programme the gulf nation will leverage to spur digital content creation and production in the region.
Spur innovations
The announcement made on the second day of the ongoing LEAP22 forum, the global technology platform taking place in Riyadh, is part of a raft of measures and investments Saudi Arabia plans to accelerate its ecosystem to become a top digital economy in the region and beyond.
The move banks on a $1.1 billion (Sh120 billion) initial investment, meant to excite Saudi Arabia’s digital content creation and production.
It is informed by revolutions such as television which first spiked manufacturing of TV sets but has since morphed and spawned several industries.
Today, it is the content creators who dared use the platform to deliver information and entertain, who were the real winners.
“Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products, a marketplace of content,” wrote Bill Gates in his prediction a quarter of a century ago.
Fortunately, no country, company or individual is too small or too big to participate in it. This is the equalizer, and a good thing for countries like Kenya which considers herself among top African nations leveraging the internet to spur innovations.
The diversity of the internet and the level of penetration, coupled with the cost and ease of utilisation provides a broad array of opportunities not only for companies, but also individuals to consider supply of information or entertainment at a cost.
The exciting thing about the internet is that anyone with a smartphone and internet can publish whatever content they want to create. To visualise this, the good old photocopier embodies the metamorphosis. The internet now allows material to be duplicated online at low cost, no matter the size of the audience, just like the photocopier did.
Many countries, firms and individuals are now laying plans to create content for the internet, targetting a global audience and Kenya must deepen its scope not to be left behind by the bandwagon. To tap the digital wealth of the nation, international and local partners will be able to benefit from an investor’s “one stop shop” also announced during the LEAP 2022 event.
