An odd breed of business executive regularly appears on the public-policy landscape—the supporter of big government in business.

Big government boosters favor not only corporate welfare initiatives, but a host of other interventions, including research and development, education, pork-barrel subsidies, and even expanded social welfare programs. Interestingly, many—but not all—of these statist business executives tend to serve in large companies. Many were never entrepreneurs, but instead dutiful managers who worked their way up through the ranks of large businesses. Their experiences, in some ways, more closely reflect the careers of bureaucrats rather than economic risk-takers.

Readers of The Road Ahead fortunately will find an author that is an entrepreneur, not a corporate bureaucrat. Indeed, Bill Gates stands as one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the late twentieth century. (An entrepreneur, we find out, who raised some of his seed capital through poker winnings in college.)

Gates’s book is a highly readable, informative, and non-technical installment in a long line of recent volumes regarding computers, telecommunications, and the future of technology.

From the outset, Gates exhibits a clear preference for private economic actions over government. He dislikes the metaphor of the information superhighway to describe the unfolding developments in the information economy. He worries about the implication that a highway should be built by government, an option Gates considers a major mistake.

Gates also recognizes that emphasis on information infrastructure and government could turn the highway into a costly white elephant. In contrast, markets emphasize applications. Indeed, Gates prefers the phrase the ultimate market.

Gates argues persuasively that government also should not get involved in trying to set some kind of compatibility standards for the emerging information market. Gates observes that de facto standards are supported by the marketplace rather than by law, they are chosen for the right reasons and replaced when something truly better shows up—the way the compact disc has almost replaced the vinyl record. Later, Gates sagaciously declares: The range of uncertainties about the information highway is very large, but the marketplace will design an appropriate system.

Being involved firsthand, Gates naturally is an optimist regarding the revolution in information technology—a nice antidote to today’s many neo-Luddite economic and social prognosticators. Gates writes favorably of the mix between free markets and information technology advancements: Capitalism, demonstrably the greatest of the constructed economic systems, has in the past decade clearly proved its advantages over the alternative systems. The information highway will magnify those advantages. . . . Adam Smith would be pleased. More important, consumers everywhere will enjoy the benefits.

In the end, entrepreneurs lie at the center of the capitalist economy as the sources of creativity, innovation, and invention. Gates correctly notes: Entrepreneurship will play a major role in shaping the development of the information highway, the same way it shaped the personal-computer business. And he grasps the full benefits of entrepreneurship as well: The good news is that people learn from both the successes and the failures, and the net result is rapid progress.

As for government, Gates offers sound advice: deregulate communications.