BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : SEPTEMBER 27, 1999 ISSUE
COVER STORY -- E.BIZ -- THE E.BIZ 25 William Joy WILLIAM JOY SUN MICROSYSTEMS Position: Co-founder and chief scientist Contribution: Co-founder and chief scientist Ambition: Create technology that lets computers talk to each other--leaving humans to do much more interesting things. The technology world's going pretty much according to Bill--but not the Bill you think. While Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) William H. Gates III must worry about an antitrust suit and the threat of a post-PC era, the ideas of Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (SUNW) chief technology officer, couldn't be more in vogue. For 20 years, the bushy-haired Joy, 44, has been the Merlin of the computer industry--peering out 10 years and foreseeing a whole new way of computing. His vision: that computers need to be much simpler to use, and information should be readily available everywhere via the Net on a range of appliances. Now, thanks in good part to Joy's prodding and Sun's Java technology, that vision is becoming reality. Joy's ideas are laying the foundation for making e-business ubiquitous. His latest musings are just as audacious. Joy foresees a world where tiny computers that are embedded in all sorts of devices talk directly to other computers, without need of human intervention. Why, for example, couldn't power plants negotiate with each other to adjust real-time to minimize pollution? ''The big emerging trend is finding ways to get computers to reliably work together--and it's much harder to do than people think,'' says Joy. ''It's going to take many years.'' Joy seems likely to enjoy the long journey. He works with a team of four in Aspen, Colo., close to the ski slopes and far from the daily grind at Sun's Silicon Valley headquarters. To peer into the future, he endlessly scours books on everything from economics to architecture, looking for any hints on how the Net will develop. Lately, he has been studying groupthink in ant colonies. ''Bill's often so far outside of the box that he's not aware there is a box,'' says Java creator James Gosling. Well, why not? It has worked so far. By Peter Burrows _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The e.biz 25: Masters of the Web Universe COVER IMAGE: The e.biz 25 Commentary: The Great Equalizer? Not by a Long Shot TABLE: Who's Lagging in the Net Age [empire builders] Jeffrey P. Bezos AMAZON.COM INC. Stephen M. Case AMERICA ONLINE INC. Timothy A. Koogle YAHOO! INC. [the innovators] Louis H. Borders WEBVAN GROUP INC. Jay S. Walker PRICELINE.COM Margaret C. Whitman EBAY INC. Glen Meakem FREE MARKETS ONLINE INC. James H. Clark MYCFO INC. Christos M. Cotsakos E*TRADE GROUP INC. [bankrollers] Masayoshi Son SOFTBANK CORP., JAPAN Robert C. Kagle BENCHMARK CAPITAL Lawton W. Fitt GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. L. John Doerr KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS   Bernard Arnault LVMH MOET HENNESSY LOUIS VUITTON   [the visionaries] Mary G. Meeker MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER John Hagel III MCKINSEY & CO. William Joy SUN MICROSYSTEMS [the architects] Louis V. Gerstner Jr. IBM CORP. Pehong Chen BROADVISION INC. David C. Peterschmidt INKTOMI INC. Kevin J. O'Connor DOUBLECLICK Ellen M. Hancock EXODUS COMMUNICATIONS [the pace setters] David S. Pottruck CHARLES SCHWAB CORP. John T. Chambers CISCO SYSTEMS Michael S. Dell DELL COMPUTER INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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