MODERN WORLD SUPER POERS

The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.  ~Leo Rosten

50 years ago, if someone said the word ‘internet’, you’d probably have thought they were talking about some kind of mixed gender netball game. You probably wouldn’t even have owned a PlayStation. That’s how dire things were back then. Today, the Internet is so powerful that you can just Google the word ‘dire’ to make sure you spelt it right.
With the Internet being so powerful today, imagine what it would be like in 50 years time. You’ll probably just have to think the word ‘dire’ and you’d have 211,000,000 related thoughts automatically enter your brain in 0.23 seconds, plus a few sponsored thoughts from Facebook and Google (in the future, these are the only two companies that will exist).
Traditionally, the world’s superpowers were counties. Modern world superpowers are individuals.
So we can assume that the two big players in the Internet world; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google, along with the two people that make the equipment you use to access the Internet, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple, will somehow form a kind of world government that is captained by one of the four.
Either way, they’re all doing it wrong. I mean, surely one of them has enough power by now to just take down the other three and run everything from one company? For that reason, I have compiled this list of who these guys are and what I would do in their place.

1. Bill Gates

Bill Gates. Smug in a can.

We all know who Bill Gates is – he’s the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the multiverse. He’s so rich that he even has his own website dedicated to his own thoughts, The Gates Notes. I mean, ok, I have one as well but that’s because … well I don’t know why but the important thing is that Bill Gates has his own website dedicated to communicating his own thoughts purely because he is sick to death of people asking him stuff.
With his own website, all he has to do when someone asks him a question is say “thegatesnotesdotcom” and he’s done. Hey Bill, what are your thoughts on climate change? thegatesnotesdotcom. Hey Bill, I’m curious, what do you teach in your classroom? thegatesnotesdotcom.
The guy is so fed up of frequent questions that he doesn’t even have a frequently asked questions section. He has an infrequently asked questions section. True story. Don’t look in there, it’s all about “Hey Bill, you’re so wise and like you, I have lots of money. Do you think I should help the poor or should I just spend it all at wall-mart?”.

If I was Bill Gates …

I would start a new computer company called ‘Oranges’ and make it very, very similar to Apple products. Then I’d make a section on my thegatesnotesdotcom website that just says ‘You have to compare Apples with Apples BIATCH!’ and then when people say “Hey Bill, don’t you think your Oranges brand is a bit too similar to Apple’s?” I’d say “thegatesnotesdotcom”.
Secondly, I would find all copies of this photo…

… and pay the people that posted it a million dollars to take it down. That or run them over in my Microhard Tank™.
PS. Follow Bill Gates on Twitter and you will be greeted by the suggestion of:
“Since you followed Bill Gates, you might also want to follow: DalaiLama,  Schwarzenegger”. There is no hope.

2. Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs. Boom.

Steve Jobs is the, in my opinion, slightly less well known arch nemesis of Bill Gates. He’s the ‘Apple’ guy and the guy that takes the credit for (i)Phones/Pods/Pads and stuff. Bill Gates hates Steve Jobs because no matter what Steve Jobs does, everybody loves him because it’s different to Microsoft. No matter what Microsoft does, everyone hates then.
Steve Jobs is the cool, artsy designer guy with his plain black top and trendy glasses, Bill Gates is the 80s nerd lounging suggestively on his desk and flashing his floppy at the camera.
However, Steve Jobs is still doing it wrong in that he doesn’t yet run the world. Only the real Apple fans have heard of him and those fans have also heard of Bill Gates. Most average computer users have heard of Bill Gates but never heard of Steve Jobs. That’s what else is wrong with the world – Internet Explorer 6. Seriously. In fact, while you’re reading this, go to the menu in your Internet browser and click on ‘Help’ and ‘About’ or similar. If you find that you are reading this using Internet Explorer 6 then please stop reading my blog right now. Thanks.

If I was Steve Jobs …

If I was Steve Jobs, I would build an army of white Apple robots like the Eve robot on Wall-E and then I would find out who registered www.stevejobs.com in my name and I would send my white Apple robot army after them and say “No! This is neither what I need, nor when I need it! Die www.stevejobs.com, die! Wait … ok yeah so as Bill Gates I would also hunt down the people that stole billgates.com and I would hunt them down too so then when people asked me “Hey Bill, how can we build satellites out of bamboo?” I could answer “billgatesdotcom” instead of the notes thing.

3. Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt. I'm killing you with my mind.

Go on. Who’s Eric Schmidt? You don’t know do you? As the guy who invented the ability to search for things, you think you would have found out who he is by now.

Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google. If you have a business that is purely on the Internet, Eric can make or break you. In fact, by taking the piss out him, this is probably the last you’ll see of this blog. Just look at his photo. Some guy has clearly just rubbed him the wrong way and Eric is thinking “Right. Just try searching for your own website on Monday morning pal.”

I don’t really know anything about Eric Schmidt so I’m just gonna jump into …

If I was Eric Schmidt …

I would find the guy that made this website, ericschmidt.com, and I would get all medieval on his ass. I mean really. A Yahoo email address? People are gonna die. I own the Internet.  Except for that part that Zuckerberg owns.

4. Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg. Insert funny comment.

If you don’t yet know who Mark Zuckerberg is, you soon will with the release of the Facebook movie, ‘The Social Network’. Soon he will go from ‘that guy whose name you saw somewhere while you were online’ to ‘the guy with the curly hair in that movie’.

Zuckerberg is the guy that everybody loves to hate. Purely because we all wish we’d done what he did and were now billionaires like him. Do you know that more people visit Facebook each week than they visit Google? Eric Schmidt is not happy. Facebook is also trying to get into search with ‘Facebook Questions’ and, in a way, already has the Google Places that Google is raving about in the form of Facebook Pages.

Zuckerberg wants it all for himself. I mean … is that a Facebook laptop that he has in the photo or has he actually taken an Apple laptop and put a Facebook sticker over the Apple logo?

If I was Mark Zuckerberg …

I would shut down the Social Network movie until they promised to removed Jesse Eisenberg as the guy who played me and replaced him with Chuck Norris. I’d then change the Facebook name overnight so it would now be ‘Zuckerbook’. It’s totally in the terms and conditions so I’d be pretty smug while doing it.
Photo credits:
Gates photo from Wikimedia by the ‘World Economic Forum’
Seductive Gates photo from  Flickr account ‘Esparta’
Jobs photo from Flickr account ‘acaben’
Schmidt photo from Flickr account ‘World Economic Forum’
Zuckerberg photo from Flickr account ‘b_d_solis’