A draft. October 1995 — June 2026. More to come.
In 1995, I asked Bill Gates a question.
I was thirty years old. Three years out of Penn State. He answered. Seventeen newspapers across five countries on four continents ran the exchange. The U.S. Department of Justice entered it as Exhibit 333 in the Microsoft antitrust case. Thirty years later, my three adult children, my niece, and my nephews are entering the world we were arguing about. This page is for them.
The question
“How long do you think we will continue to misuse technology by having it replace tasks that humans perform? The fundamental needs of society are rapidly being met and at some point soon there will be many workers with nothing to do — or not enough for companies to pay them a living wage.”
— Dennis Hollarn II, Erie, Pa. · October 1995 · dhollarn@advacom.com
His answer
Over the past two centuries the standard of living has risen dramatically because human productivity has increased. Progress has been driven by various forms of technology, including mechanization and advances in areas such as medicine and software.
Many jobs have been replaced with new ones. Today there are fewer blacksmiths and more auto mechanics, fewer telephone operators and more telemarketers. People who might be toiling in fields had they been working in 1795 use their minds to earn a living in 1995.
Technology will continue to improve human productivity. Those societies and people who find better ways of working will thrive — compelling others to catch up.
This trend toward using less human labor to accomplish more shouldn’t alarm us. It should please us. It means that fewer and fewer jobs involve drudgery.
I don’t believe the number of jobs in society will decline or that work will get less interesting as machines take over certain tasks.
History and economics teach us that if a job is lost because of better productivity, the person who held that job is freed to help meet some other need. Until we have infinitely good education, infinitely good service everywhere and beautiful inner cities, there are jobs left to be done.
The day that most important needs are met, society will shorten the work week and increase vacation time. As the world gets richer, some of its wealth will go to increasing relaxation time.
We must not lose sight of the fact that there will be dislocations for many individuals. The nature of work has been changing for generations, with people scrambling to adapt. The young tend to be better at this, because they don’t have as large an investment in the established way of doing things.
Government can soften the impact of dislocation. But governments cannot affect the eventual outcome. The market mechanism ultimately is in control.
— Bill Gates, syndicated by The New York Times Syndicate, October 25 – November 14, 1995
Headlines around the world
My question ran in newspapers across five countries on four continents between October 25 and November 14, 1995. Each editor chose how to frame the exchange. Notice the pattern: almost every headline amplified Bill Gates’s reassurance. Almost none surfaced the concern in my question.
Fourteen headlines. Five countries. Four continents. Three weeks of syndication. Every editor chose reassurance over inquiry. Thirty years later, the reassurance hasn’t held.
The evidence
Three independent verifications. Anyone can check.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division — Entered as Exhibit 333 in United States v. Microsoft, the federal antitrust case. View the exhibit at justice.gov →
- The Spokesman-Review online archive — Full verbatim text, publicly accessible. View the column at spokesman.com →
- Newspapers.com archive — 12 syndicated copies pulled June 9, 2026 (subscription required to view scans)
- LexisNexis Academic — 4 additional papers verified in personal research, April 18, 2008
Original newspaper scans are being added to this page as I get them organized. If you want to see any of the source documents now, contact me directly.
Thirty years later
I’m sixty now. I’ve watched this question I asked in 1995 become the central economic question of our generation. AI is replacing knowledge work that nobody thought was at risk. Wages haven’t kept pace with productivity. The market mechanism Bill Gates trusted has concentrated wealth in ways nobody anticipated in 1995.
Bill Gates was confidently wrong about the timeline. The editors who chose reassuring headlines were confidently wrong about the framing. I was the one asking the question that turned out to matter. I’m still asking it — now for my three adult children, my niece, and my nephews, who are inheriting the answer.
This site is the longform answer I’ve been working on since 1995. The reflections. The investing guidance. The links to people worth listening to. The lessons learned. It’s a brain dump from one regular guy who’s been paying attention for thirty years — for the next generation that has to navigate this faster than anyone before them.
Why I’m sharing this now
I’m sixty years old. I’m trying to find the value of my life that I can pass on to my kids and leave a legacy in this website. I started this conversation in 1995. I’m continuing it now — for the people in my family who are about to live through what I asked about.
None of this — the career, the kids, this site — would exist without my wonderful ex-wife. Her common sense and her motherly love toward our three children is the reason they turned out so grounded and successful. Whatever I’ve built, I built standing on what she gave us.
This page is a draft. There’s more to come.
— Dennis Hollarn II
Erie, Pennsylvania
June 2026