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BILL GATES:
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, as previously mentioned, is the wealthiest man in the world. He single handedly has revolutionized the world. Whether his effect on this planet is for better or for worse or a combination of the two does not seem relevant to this discussion, but he is someone who clearly has been successful in his endeavors. He managed to do well enough in prep school to go to Harvard which he subsequently dropped out of. His dropping out of Harvard was not due to failure but a conscious choice of getting into the computing field while the iron was hot. He then went on to found Microsoft and the rest is history. Gates success did not start when he founded Microsoft at age 20. As a young boy Gates and his friends formed a club, The Lakeside Programmers Group. They learned about programming and wrote and debugged computer programs for corporations in exchange for computer time. Later they wrote a program called Traf-o-data which helped determine the location of traffic lights for Washington state.
In 1993 Oliver Sacks published the book An Anthropologist On Mars in which he described Temple Grandin as well as some of the characteristics of autism. John Seawald wrote an article in the New Yorker called E-mailing Bill Gates in which he described some of Gates' idiosyncrasies. Time magazine ran an article titled Diagnosing Bill Gates in which comparisons were made between some of the things mentioned in the New Yorker article and some of the characteristics of autism that Sacks mentions in his book.
Temple Grandin comments on this further in her book Thinking In Pictures. The first trait that she mentions is Gates' reportedly rocks to and fro in a fashion similar to a person with autism. Next, she mentions Gates' lack of social skills and quotes a sentence from the Seawald article, "Social niceties are not what Bill Gates is about." She further goes on to allege that Gates has remarkable savant skills, giving an example of him having memorized long bible passages and reciting them without making any mistakes. She further goes on to state that Gates' voice lacks tone and comments on how he looks young and boyish for his age. She comments on Gates' lack of hygiene and nice clothes.
Seawald, in his article, does indeed say that social niceties are not what Bill Gates is about but one must read the article itself for the context to be apparent. He is not commenting on Bill Gates' social skills in general, but the manner in which Bill Gates sent him e-mail. He states that Gates never signed his e-mails, addressed him by name and had no letterhead on his emails. It is very common for people to send an e-mail without the salutation, 'dear so and so'. People don't usually sign e-mails or have letterheads on them. A comparison between e-mail and regular mail is not really apt. It is possible that in 1994 Seawald was a newcomer to online nuances and did not understand the differences between e-mail and regular mail.
Did Bill Gates really have savant skills? The bible passage that Grandin refers to is discussed in James Wallace and Jim Erickson's book Hard Drive The Making of the Microsoft Empire. It talks about a contest in which the Reverend Dale Turner gave to buy a free dinner to anyone who could memorize chapters 5,6 and 7 of the book of Matthew, known as the Sermon on the Mount. Bill Gates at age 11 was able to quote the passage from memory, not missing a word. This does not necessarily mean he was a savant. Though the passage is rather long, about a few pages from the bible it is something that could be committed to memory by someone with no photographic memory who had spent enough time and hours studying over it. The book does not specify whether or not Gates just picked it up and read it once and then stated it word for word, or if he spent many hours for several weeks or longer studying the passage and learning it. The latter seems more plausible than the former. I do not believe this shows any evidence that Gates had any form of savant skills analogous to persons who are often ret*d and can hear a music piece once and play it on the piano or memorize something and recite it, having read it only once. The book also mentions that 31 other people were taken out to dinner by the reverend. These people managed to accomplish the same feat as Gates. Does this mean they were also autistic savants?
Does Bill Gates lack of hygiene point to an autistic spectrum disorder? Poor hygiene is not mentioned as diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV-R for autism. However, many persons with autism, including myself, have had problems with hygiene. When I was younger I would often be too disorganized to use deodorant and bathe properly. I often smelled bad. In my case, and probably in the case of others with autism, this is due to executive dysfunction. Executive dysfunction, the inability to formulate goals and carry out plans, is common among autistic people. It is hard to concentrate and to think about hygiene even if you know you have to do it. Is there evidence that if in fact Bill Gates did have problems with hygiene that it was a result of executive dysfunction or an impaired ability to get things done? One must remember that when Bill Gates and Paul Allen were first starting Microsoft, they would work 20 hours a day, nonstop. It would seem a likely explanation for Gates lack of hygiene (assuming that at least some of it is not embellishment by the media) would be his long working hours and being so driven to succeed that he did not take the time, to shower or use deodorant or dress in overly nice clothes.
Although Gates has sometimes been reported to wear dirty clothes or have unkempt hair this was not always the case. Whenever Gates would meet with executives from IBM he would don a suit and comb his hair and would appear very well-groomed. It seems that when it was necessary for Mr. Gates to make an impression, even with his busy schedule, he could make time for good hygiene.
The fact that Bill Gates has a rocking behavior is mentioned numerous times in various magazine articles, including Seawald's, as well as in the Wallace and Erickson's book and The Plot To Get Bill Gates. He started doing this behavior as a very small child after his parents gave him a rocking horse which he used. He apparently had a lot of energy and used this to rock. Is his rocking a definitive sign of autism? I have a friend who has schizophrenia and I noticed him rocking from time to time. When I commented on the fact that he seemed to be like me, rocking in a manner reminiscent of autism, he replied that schizophrenics rocked also. I was very surprised to hear this as I had no idea that schizophrenics rocked as well as autistics. On MRI scans schizophrenics have cerebellar abnormalities that are similar to autism. It is possible that if portions of the cerebellum are smaller in both autistics and schizophrenics that this could cause some sort of vestibular abnormality that would cause both of them to rock. As far as I know nobody has ever suggested that Bill Gates may be schizophrenic or have schizophrenic traits.
I was also in a group therapy session with a person who had mild cerebral palsy he rocked also. As far as I know, Gates has never been suggested to have cerebral palsy.
Another arcane neurologic condition called jactatio capitis also causes persons to rock in a manner similar to persons with autism while they are either asleep or in a drowsy state. One certainly cannot rule this condition out in Gates. It is possible given the long hours that Bill Gates works and the fact he may sometimes try to get by on only four hours of sleep could cause him to rock a lot if he had this condition. Unlike autism the persons with this condition sometimes rock and head bang but they still lead normal lives and it does not impair a person's ability to function the way autism does.
Is Bill Gates rocking behavior evidence of autism or some type of neurologic condition or could it be possibly a nervous habit. For example, there are people who have nervous tics but this does not mean they have full blown Tourette's syndrome with all of its other impairments such as the shouting of profanity.
One of the cardinal symptoms of autism is the inability to relate to people and make friends. From reading about Gates' childhood there is no evidence to suggest that this was the case. One good friend of Gates whom he met in the fourth grade was Carl Edmark. They went to elementary school and high school together and continued to be friends for many years afterwards. Another friend was Kent Evans with whom he attended Lakeside prep school. One of Gates most well-known friends is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Gates and Allen met when they were students at Lakeside Academy. They spent a lot of time together on the new computer system that the school bought as the two had a common interest in that subject and later starting Microsoft together. Some of Gates' classmates at Lakeside did not think of Gates as a social outcast. They remember him as someone with a sense of humor, risk taker, and someone fun to be with. This would hardly fit the stereotype of an autistic person. This included another one of Gates' friends at Lakeside, Paul Carlson who stated that anyone who remembered him as a nerdy person did not deal with him very closely or was remembering wrong.
Autistic men, including myself, often have problems finding girlfriends and rarely marry. If Bill Gates had fared well in this department, that would diminish evidence of his having autistic traits.
Though a late bloomer, Gates had a variety of girlfriends. He would approach women with the same competitive zeal as he approached his business dealings. He competed with Borland founder and CEO Phillipe Kahn in the selling of computer language packages as well as romance. Gates dated Kahn's ex-wife for a while. He also dated ex-wife of Oracle rival Larry Ellison. At the time Microsoft was a fledgling company Gates dated the company secretary.
Gates' first serious girlfriend was Jill Bennett, A DEC computer sales representative whom Gates started dating in 1983. Their relationship lasted about a year. Shortly after they split up Gates found a new squeeze, software venture capitalist Ann Winblad. In the book Hard Drive The Making of the Microsoft Empire, authors James Wallace and Jim Erickson report that Winblad debunks the stereotype of Gates as the nerdish character the media had made him out to be. She considered him as "an adventurous risk taker who likes to live close to the edge." Their relationship lasted three years before they split up. In the late 1980s, Gates met his future wife, Melinda French, at a Microsoft media event. They dated for several years and then married in the 1990s. Gates seems to have had a normal life in terms of his relationships with women.
A person with autism or Aspergers' would likely have an impaired ability to relate to people and would not be successful in any profession involving salesmanship skills. This is not the case with Bill Gates. Wallace and Erickson describe Gates' aptitude as a salesman in their book. For the first several years of Microsoft's existence it was Gates who made cold calls, approached hardware makers and gave them the compelling argument to buy Microsoft products in spite of the fact the company often did not meet deadlines and sometimes did not adequately debug software products before releasing them to the market. Also, what made Gates a billionaire, was his ability to cut a deal with Seattle Computer Products and purchase DOS for only $50,000. Would a person with autism or Aspergers' be able to think outside of the box and change language in a contract specifying buying outright rights rather than an exclusive license? Gates obvious salesmanship abilities and deal making talents would seem to me to argue against autistic traits.
Never, to my knowledge, has having a high pitched voice or looking young for one's age been an indicator for autism. Grandin, in her book, does not state why these traits would be indicative of autism.
In Gary Rivlin's book, The Plot To Get Bill Gates, Rivlin talks about a computer industry journalist named Graham Lea who also claimed to have evidence that Bill Gates had Asperger's syndrome. He states that Lea claimed to have written a definitive paper proving that Bill Gates had Asperger's. For months, Rivlin tried to persuade Lea to send him the paper. Lea was evasive and would only write back statements discussing a book he was writing and share intelligence that other journalists with an interest in Microsoft had. When Rivlin pressed him further, Lea cut off correspondence to him. A Google search with the words 'Graham Lea Bill Gates Asperger's' brings up nothing about a paper proving that Gates has Asperger's. Could this reduce the evidence that Bill Gates has autism and or Asperger's?
It's all armchair.
14 Dec 2007, 2:18 pm
