I soaked that book up as a 15 year old when it was released. I remember proudly writing a report on it.

In retrospect, The Road Ahead probably had a more profound effect on me than I realized at the time. There's a great quote from the book which sums up why I took hold to computers and software more than many of the other creative and engineering related endeavors I had at the time:

"Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things."