I sent Bill Gates an email back in 1995, well there wasn't much else to do on the Web back then, what can I say? Anyway, I emailed him on the subject of what to do about under-priviledged kids and families who don't have access to the Web and how the gap between rich and poor may widen even more because of that. In 1995 nowhere near as many people had home PC's as today, there was a handful of people 16 million (OK, 16 million is more than a handful), whereas today there is an estimated 544 million and Internet cafes were a thing of the future. So of course that was a valid concern for good old me to have voiced, merely months after I'd gone online myself and discovered the potential that was apparent even back then.

Did I get a reply? Yes, I got an autoresponder. With hindsight it's easy to see that Bill had bigger fish to fry at the time, he was just about to realise that he'd misread the Web, that he should really do something horrible to Netscape (Internet Explorer 2.0 was very crap and minimal - like it now handled cookies!!) and I suppose in that context then misguided post-modern socialists like me were really not worth bothering about.

Whatever, I just found that email reply tonight and have decided to share it publicly for the first time for your pleasure and enjoyment, don't say I'm not good to you. By the way, in 1995 I was commonly known by my previous name of 101335.2155, some years later I changed it by deed poll to Gary Turner.

From: rcmd@microsoft.com (local user)
To: 101335.2155@compuserve.com
Date: Mon Dec 25 03:31:43 1995

Thanks for your recent email in response to my bi-monthly column. I appreciate your taking the time to write me. As you can probably imagine, I receive hundreds of messages from outside of Microsoft each day. While I love to read people?s views and share ideas about technology, unfortunately, I am not able to answer each and every inquiry individually.

Instead, I select and respond to some questions in the column itself. The second column each month is dedicated to answering questions from readers like you, so keep reading and I?ll do my best to address the topics that are of general interest to readers worldwide.

For more information on Microsoft, our history, previous columns or recent speeches I have given, check out Microsoft?s home pages on the World Wide Web at http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo.

Thanks for supporting Microsoft and our products and best of luck with all your endeavors.

Bill Gates

Not that I bear a grudge or anything.

Gates. "Nope, I'm still ignoring him."