Art on the Infobahn : Technology: Microsoft’s William H. Gates gently counsels skittish museum directors at a Seattle meeting on the future in cyberspace.

“To be blunt, this is going to happen. It’s not like you get on your next tax return to check, ‘Yes, I want the information highway’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” says Microsoft chairman William H. Gates, flailing his arms as a shy grin lights up his boyish face.

Mr. Infobahn himself is wrapping up the keynote address Thursday night at the Assn. of Art Museum Directors’ conference on “Art Museums on the Information Highway” and he has finally hit his stride.

An hour earlier, the 38-year-old multibillionaire looked rather like a dutiful child--politely enduring his elders at a dinner party while rocking in his chair, fiddling with his wedding ring and wishing he could disappear. When he rose to speak, he referred to himself as “a high school graduate” and said the elite group was “probably the best-educated audience I’ve ever spoken to.”

But now, in response to questions about potential negative effects of advanced technology on museums, he is telling it as he sees it.

“There are people like me . . . who are spending lots of money putting this thing forward,” Gates says of the communications pathway that he wants to control by supplying its standard operating-system software--just as he has in the personal computer industry with the software Windows.

“I see ‘the information highway’ as largely positive,” Gates says. “It’s a matter of taking advantage of it.”

How to take advantage and also take charge of art museums’ role in the inevitable technological revolution has been the point of the four-day conference, which winds up today.

And indeed--despite concerns about quality control, copyrights and unauthorized use of reproductions of artworks--more and more museums are plunging into the Digital Age.

The evidence has never been more clear than at the conference, where participants have watched interactive programs on everything from the conservation of Renaissance paintings to “virtual museums.” The museum directors have quizzed gurus mercilessly and shrieked with amazement over such wonders as a Costa Rican ceramic jaguar that turns into a virtual growling jungle cat in an inventive program under development at Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum.

But now they are being treated to a bit of painfully elementary advice from the world’s most legendary nerd: “I encourage you to use PCs now while you are a little bit young and a little down on the learning curve,” Gates tells his audience, suggesting that the place to start is with CD-ROMs and E-mail.

All museums should have their best objects scanned into a database, if only for behind-the-scenes use, he says. But technological changes are happening so fast that museums should not invest in systems they can’t afford to replace in four years.

Rambling from one topic to another in an hour’s worth of extemporaneous remarks, Gates often adopts a reassuring tone. He is, after all, speaking to museum directors who have resisted his efforts to license digital reproduction rights to their collections through his company, Continuum Productions Corp.

“I don’t think that (by) diving in there are very many mistakes to be made. Diving in is a reasonably safe thing,” he says. “There is no need to do any kind of exclusive licensing. You can retain full control of your material in terms of licensing it to do whatever you want.”

As for worries about today’s museum visitors turning into tomorrow’s mouse potatoes, Gates says electronic publishing can create more knowledgeable viewers and increase museum audiences by making art more accessible.

Furthermore, he contends, the information highway will make quick work of loathsome tasks and leave more time for pleasure.

“Art is one of those things that as people have more leisure time and as it is made more approachable and interesting, it might rise in popularity,” Gates says. “It is in your hands to decide how you rise to that challenge.”