BOOK
"The computer age is over" is George Gilder's opening shot in Telecosm, a long-promised volume that recaps ideas long championed by the prolific pundit, analyst, and conference host. Gilder's epoch-making claim: The computing empire of Gates and Grove was a mere stepping-stone for a new era - one of ubiquitous bandwidth. It's not a new story, but Gilder tells it much better than most in this primer for the bandwidth age. Building on optical fiber's nearly magical properties, he weaves visions of a glowing fibersphere enveloping the globe in a blanket of communication - instantaneous, unlimited, and ever cheaper - for which the PC is but one humble access point. In the glow of the new light, old axioms of businesses, governments, and cultures are turned on their heads. And investors grow rich on new companies like JDS Uniphase and Enkidu Research.
The book works because Gilder's starry-eyed claims (and stock tips) are grounded in an engaging narrative. Much of Telecosm recounts, in jargon-free if often ecstatic prose, the development of today's fiber-optic network, from pioneering researcher Will Hicks to Qwest cofounder (and escapee) Nayal Shafei. Gilder spins engineering research and business strategies into an Arthurian struggle, heroically dispatching outmoded bandwidth-bound thinking, from Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe's 1996 forecast of an Internet meltdown to the FCC's crudely managed spectrum auctions. Such zealotry gives Telecosm the momentum of an airplane thriller, but Gilder's relentless extolling of the willful individual will leave more than a few cross-country fliers feeling they've unwittingly brought Ayn Rand on board.
With bits and pieces having been published since 1994 in the magazine he founded, Forbes ASAP, the book serves less to tout new ideas than to celebrate the triumph of the "dumb network." As fiber conduits become exponentially fatter and faster, the Net no longer needs intelligent switches as traffic cops at its intersections. Its brains move instead to smart end nodes - computers, phones, even cars empowered by gigahertz processors. The dumb network, of course, is near-dogma today, but Metcalfe himself credits Gilder for evangelizing that a bandwidth explosion would render complex, expensive ATM backbones - the Next Big Thing in early-'90s networking - unnecessary.
Telecosm's only real disappointment comes when Gilder envisions infinite bandwidth's effects on our daily lives: a familiar work-in-your-jammies futurism, where Dad reviews the family finances while Mom buys groceries online, free from unbidden commercial interests. "In the future," Gilder promises, "no one will be able to trick you into watching an ad." Web veterans have a different axiom: Infinite bandwidth equals infinite adwidth.
Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World, by George Gilder: $26. The Free Press: www.simonsays.com.
STREET CRED
The Me Index
Gildergasm
Anglo Galactico
Witch Hunt
Anti-G Shock
Pharm Trek
It's a Wrap
ReadMe
Music
Comicopia
On Your Mark, Get Set, Row!
Interface-Off
Just Outta Beta
The Burrows of New York
Work Study
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