My life is not all that interesting. Like everyone else, I've got those half-dozen really good stories wrung from 44 years of living, but from there it's pretty much a downhill trudge toward descriptions of new lifeforms being created in my refrigerator, or that dream I had in which my girlfriend gave birth to a neutron bomb. But just occasionally, my life comes in contact with a few other lives and the result is something worth devoting 1/52nd of my year's work to. That's what happened over the last week, during which I interviewed a variety of folks for PBS. The most interesting characterstic of my interviewees was their combined net worth -- $50 billion. The rich guys were (in order of wealth): Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Andy Grove.

The secret of my so-called career is that I grew up in a family that flew airplanes. We didn't have a lot of money, but we always had a lot of airplanes, some of which were even flyable. Airplane people, like boat people and car people, value the hardware above everything else. So when I was a kid and met some old guy out at the airport, what mattered was his airplane. That's how I met Tom Watson Jr.

Watson was the CEO of IBM in those days and the son of the guy who built IBM to greatness. It was Watson Jr. who committed IBM to building computers in the first place and, at about the time I met him, had bet the company on developing the 360-series mainframes -- still IBM's bread and butter. But all I knew was that he had a biplane, a beautiful antique, and he showed it proudly to me at an airshow when I was about 10 years old. It was much later that I learned his identity.

Whenever I meet some bigshot, I think of Tom Watson Jr., who was in his day the equivalent of Bill Gates and Larry Ellison and Andy Grove combined. So meeting these latter-day tycoons is no big deal.

It's no big deal unless, of course, you are a corporate PR person. These schizophrenic creatures swarm around billionaires. They want the bigshot to get publicity, but only positive publicity. They live in fear of an antagonistic question or of a camera crew that keeps the boss waiting. They fuss and preen and posture in a vain attempt to make the big guy think he needs them. That's what happened this time in the case of Bill Gates, where we were delayed for several weeks to allow the PR people to "brief" Bill G. Brief Bill Gates? On what? On his own company? On his own career? On his own opinions?

I interviewed Gates in a model home, sort of a computerized house of the future built inside an office building at Microsoft. It's a very nice house, too, though apparently nobody in the future will sleep or go to the bathroom. And I guess everyone will have a machine room filled with servers and a technician to make sure all the computers keep working, which should be good for employment. Oh, and we'll apparently still have kitchens, but nobody will be allowed to actually eat in them. Microsoft knows about these things.

The actual Gates interview was anticlimactic, as usual. He's a self-centered but nice guy, totally fixated on his business, which he identifies with 100 percent. There is no Bill Gates and Microsoft: Bill Gates IS Microsoft. The PR people worry that the questions will be too hard, too antagonistic, will piss-off Bill, will bore him, will make him think. Bill likes to think, he wants to be challenged. But since the most time we ever spend together is an hour per year, he never gets to do more than posture. I'd really like to see the guy change his mind about something, actually in my presence.

And everything said has a purpose. There were three undercurrents in this interview: 1) Internet Explorer is a separately-distributed part of Windows 95, but not a separate product (this story is for the Department of Justice); 2) Java should be a programming language, not an operating system (take that, Scott McNealy!); and 3) only a company as big and rich and smart as Microsoft can design the next step in user interfaces. (Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse and the graphical user interface all by himself, must have been a freak.)

Thirteen questions, a little small talk (Gates is always better -- and more likeable -- when the camera is turned off) and he's gone. The only moment that felt unscripted was when I told him that in several months of shooting there were only two locations with too much interference for our radio mikes to work -- the Pentagon in Washington and Bill's new house on Lake Washington. He liked that.

Jump to Intel HQ in Santa Clara, where the PR lady is worried. Andy Grove is grumpy, she says, and has no sense of humor. So I am not supposed to crack any jokes, which is to say that I am supposed to reorder my DNA on the spot. Sure.

Andy Grove arrives, wondering why he wasn't interviewed on my last show, which was about the PC industry. We interviewed Gordon Moore and Ted Hof, but not Andy. What gives? I explained that we tried for four months without success to get an interview. Andy claims no knowledge of this effort and I believe him. No doubt the Intel PR department, believing Andy is grumpy and humorless, thought they were protecting him.

Andy Grove not only needs no protection, he's a charming and funny guy! Sure he's paranoid. Sure he crushes competitors before breakfast. But good questions still produce good answers. The theme here was that Intel will go wherever the market does. Network computers don't look like a big market to Intel, but Andy Grove is perfectly willing to dominate small markets, too. Anything that sells silicon is worth building if you are the world's largest chip company. So, unlike Microsoft, Intel likes everything that's new, especially if requires more processing power and will get you and me to buy a new PC. At this point Intel can only grow as fast as the market grows, and Andy Grove knows that. It's in his interest, then, to become a statesman and to find a sense of humor.

Finally, we're at Larry Ellison's Japanese-style house in Atherton, where the PR lady is worried about parking. Our van can't be next to Larry's Mercedes. They might mate? Inside the house, she panics each time I wander out of the room in which we are waiting. Could I be installing bugs? Searching Larry's underwear drawer?

Munsingwear briefs, size 34, with a kangaroo pouch.

Larry's different from Bill and Andy. Oracle is just as impressive an achievement as Microsoft or Intel, but the other two men tend to let their empires stand as monuments in themselves while Larry acts as a carnival barker for his. He is brilliant, clearly the best and easiest interview of the bunch, because Larry is the only one who wants to be liked. He needs to be the smartest person in the room which, fortunately for him, isn't hard. Larry doesn't want to know the questions in advance. He WANTS to work without a net. And as a result he's as ablaze with ideas as he is with trappings of conspicuous consumption. Like him or not, Larry Ellison is probably the least boring person in Silicon Valley.

Ellison's theme is simple: the Net changes everything. Network computers are the future. PCs will go away. And all the data in the world will be -- or ought to be -- stored on Oracle servers. It's a compelling argument if you buy Larry's idea that almost anything worth doing with a PC these days is already done over a skinny little wire. What's the difference between a Pentium PC with a 56K modem and a network computer with a 56K modem when all people do is e-mail and Web surfing? Good question.

In the small talk that follows the interview, Larry and I discussed flying. We're both in awe of a pilot named Wayne Handley who has been teaching Larry to fly aerobatics. Wayne's other job is as a crop duster.

Remember, it's only the hardware that counts.