The notion for Think Week, which had its roots in Gates' visits to his grandmother at the canal in the 1980s, was his alone. "There are people who take retreats and go off to fish," he said. But his idea was to skip the fun and devote the time to work. "I wanted to force myself to read five or six related papers and then go take a walk and then write up my thoughts about ... when do cameras really come in, when do robots really come in, when does speech translation get to being good enough, how do the various form factors-like phones vs. tablets-relate to each other?