Bill Gates Says We're Living in a 'Golden Age of Computer Science'

Software innovation, mobile devices and a host of advancements in IT are contributing to an era of profound technological change, according to Microsoft ex-CEO Bill Gates.

New advances in software and increasingly more powerful hardware are paving the way for a computing renaissance, of sorts, according to Microsoft's influential co-founder and current chairman, Bill Gates. In a July 15 address at Microsoft Research's Faculty Summit in Redmond, Wash., Gates said, "I think it's fair to say that we're in a golden age of computer science." Hinting that innovations like cloud computing are finally putting within reach some his early ambitions for his software company, Gates hankered  to "the original vision of Microsoft, that we ought to dream about what software could do if we had infinite computing and infinite storage." "That almost is our reality today," he added. Microsoft operates its own vast network of cloud data centers in support of its Windows Azure cloud computing platform and other Web-based services. Of late, the company has been pouring development resources into expanding Azure's capabilities, cloud-enabling practically all of its software offerings and maintaining a pace of innovation that's a generations removed from the days when it sold boxed copies of its PC operating systems, applications and development tools.