• Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during a seminar in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Microsoft Corp. is the world's biggest software maker. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg News
  

• Since Research Triangle Park was founded in 1959, the tech industry has been one of the state's most important. About 70,000 are employed in information jobs in the state, about a 40 percent increase since the early 1990s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  RTP is the largest science park in the country, with 170 knowledge-based companies on 7,000 acres. In Charlotte, the University Research Park – founded near UNC Charlotte in 1966 – hosts more than 100 businesses on 3,200 acres.

In the next 10 years, computers as flexible as a sheet of paper will replace notepads and newspapers, while others will be able to intuit what you're trying to find online, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday to a group of Charlotte technology workers.

Ballmer's speech and question-and-answer session kicked off the N.C. Technology Association conference in uptown Charlotte. He discussed topics including health care costs and the future of Microsoft's new search engine, Bing.

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