I tend to enjoy documentary content quite a bit.
My love of the genre started a little over a decade ago when I saw the graphic-design doc “Helvetica” by Gary Hustwit.
Beyond that, I enjoy reading “business profile” books. For example, I’ve read nearly everything written about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — along with numerous books on the tech industry.
When I saw that Netflix had added three-part docuseries “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates,” I had to check it out.
As ensconced in the cultural zeitgeist as Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates is, I feel like I don’t know much about the tech icon.
Quite honestly, my impressions of Gates are built on the voluminous content I’ve consumed about Apple Computer, along with Anthony Michael Hall’s portrayal of Gates in the 1999 movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley."
Each of the three parts of “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” runs just under an hour apiece. The series works methodically to delve into the biological operating system that powers one of the world’s most successful technocrats.
It also spends considerable time on the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Each part weaves elements from Gates’s past with current work he is doing to solve global issues.
“Part 1” of the series focuses on Gates’s work to provide clean drinking water to impoverished regions around the world (you’ll learn some interesting tidbits about toilets that can self-clean waste). “Part 2” focuses on the foundation’s work to eradicate a lingering polio threat in Third World nations. “Part 3” focuses on the hefty task of reinventing nuclear power (via his venture TerraPower) as a clean solution to the world’s energy problems.
Over the years I’ve typically assumed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was primarily consumed with raising and distributing money for its pet projects. While that might occupy much of the foundation’s time, the documentary shows Gates nurturing technology he hopes can solve the problems presented.
Gates says, “It’s not my goal to be inspiring.” Rather, he suggests the world’s limited resources spur him towards “optimization.”
He is a technophile who believes technology will save everything.
He is described as having “a giant Excel spreadsheet in his head and everything has a spot.”
One of the more enjoyable aspects of “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” is the fact that it doesn’t shy away from presenting all the “wonkier” details of his thought process.
More interesting is the biographic information about Gates strewn throughout the documentary’s three episodes. I’ll be honest, I wanted to see more of this content.
We learn about Gates as an anti-social youngster who preferred to be holed up in his room reading books than out in the world (to this day he carries a tote full of books... and apparently reads 100 pages per hour).
His mother pushed him out of the house to try things. We see the influence that family trips to “Camp Cheerio” had in cultivating his competitive nature. We also get insight into Gates’s early friendship with Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) at the private school he attended after sixth grade.
(The docuseries also talks about some of the tension that festered between Allen and Gates over Walter Isaacson’s book “The Innovators.”)
From a young age, Gates wanted to understand what made “super successful” people tick.
“Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” also touches on Gates’s friendship with Omaha billionaire investor Warren Buffett — a key friendship formed as an adult. Gates’s mother suggested he meet Buffet.
Despite his initial reluctance, the two have become fast friends and play bridge together.
Buffett is leaving half his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You’ll often see Gates visiting some of Buffett’s favorite Omaha haunts during the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting.
The docuseries also features the relationship between Bill and his wife Melinda (although it doesn’t delve into it nearly as much as I had hoped).
There is an interesting “motif” presented in “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” involving the significance of the novel “The Great Gatsby” during the early stages of their courtship.
The series is directed and narrated by Davis Guggenheim. Guggenheim is best known for advocacy/documentary films “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for ‘Superman.’”
As a result, “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” might pay a bit too much attention to the advocacy aspects of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
While the charitable work is a key part of Gates’s current zeal, I felt like certain aspects of “Gates the businessman” were given short shrift.
(The feud with Apple over the Windows GUI is basically skipped over in the series).
“Gates Notes” (the blog of Bill Gates) features a post titled “From the cutting room floor” that includes three stories cut from the docuseries (available exclusively to “Gates Notes Insider” subscribers).
As I am writing this post, I have Microsoft’s live Surface product reveal event streaming in the background. The company announced it is manufacturing a new smartphone built on Google’s Android operating system (a move that seems antithetical for a company whose fortunes are built on its desktop operating system).
I’ve always been an Apple fanboy.
My love of Apple’s products started when I took a summer school class after third grade (in 1982) that had us programming AppleSoft BASIC on Apple II computers to draw pictures line-by-line and dot-by-dot.
The only time I’ve used MS-DOS or Windows was during my time as a UNO student in the 1990s. We had a News Writing & Reporting class that used archaic DOS terminals with amber monitors. There was also a Publication Design & Graphics course that taught Aldus PageMaker on Windows 3.1.
Despite my lean experience with Windows, the Microsoft Office software has been an important part of the marketing communications business Bridget and I started in 1996.
It has been interesting to watch Microsoft embrace the symbiosis of software and hardware in its offerings the past decade. Those moves — along with the emphasis on search and cloud services — has shifted the company from mere software manufacturer to something closer to Apple in terms form and function.
I would’ve loved to hear more of Gates’s thoughts on the current direction of Microsoft in “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” — including his insight into some of the missteps the company made in the early 2000s.
Be that as it may, “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” offers moments of clarity as it examines one of this generation’s iconic business figures.
Some business tycoons have head-scratching second acts — Gates has stayed busy and taken full advantage of the latter years in his life.
I hope Netflix continues producing “deep dive” content focusing on technology and business leaders. It’s content I’d readily consume...
