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The computer age is over.
After a cataclysmic global run of thirty
years, it has given birth to the age of the telecosm --
the world enabled and defined by new communications technology.
Chips and software will continue to make great contributions
to our lives, but the action is elsewhere. To seek the key
to great wealth and to understand the bewildering ways that
high tech is restructuring our lives, look not to chip speed
but to communication power, or bandwidth. Bandwidth is exploding,
and its abundance is the most important social and economic
fact of our time.
George Gilder is one of the great technological
visionaries, and "the man who put the 's' in "telecosm"
(Telephony magazine). He is equally famous for understanding
and predicting the nuts and bolts of complex technologies,
and for putting it all together in a soaring view of why
things change, and what it means for our daily lives. His
track record of futurist predictions is one of the best,
often proving to be right even when initially opposed by
mighty corporations and governments. He foresaw the power
of fiber and wireless optics, the decline of the telephone
regime, and the explosion of handheld computers, among many
trends. His list of favored companies outpaced even the
soaring Nasdaq in 1999 by more than double.
His long-awaited Telecosm is a bible
of the new age of communications. Equal parts science story,
business history, social analysis, and prediction, it is
the one book you need to make sense of the titanic changes
underway in our lives. Whether you surf the net constantly
or not at all, whether you live on your cell phone or hate
it for its invasion of private life, you need this book.
It has been less than two decades since the introduction
of the IBM personal computer, and yet the enormous changes
wrought in our lives by the computer will pale beside the
changes of the telecosm. Gilder explains why computers will
"empty out," with their components migrating to
the net; why hundreds of low-flying satellites will enable
hand-held computers and communicators to become ubiquitous;
why television will die; why newspapers and magazines will
revive; why advertising will become less obnoxious; and
why companies will never be able to waste your time again.
Along the way you will meet the movers and
shakers who have made the telecosm possible. From Charles
Townes and Gordon Gould, who invented the laser, to the
story of JDS Uniphase, "the Intel of the Telecosm,"
to the birthing of fiberless optics pioneer TeraBeam, here
are all the inventors and entrepreneurs who will be hailed
as the next Edison or Gates. From hardware to software to
chips to storage, here are the technologies that will soon
be as basic as the air we breathe.
George Gilder publishes the Gilder
Technology Report, a monthly newsletter, and is a Senior
Fellow at the Discovery Institute, where he directs the
program on high technology and public policy. He is a founder
and contributor to ForbesASAP, a contributing editor
of Forbes magazine, and a frequent writer for The
Economist, Harvard Business Review, The Wall
Street Journal, and other publications. His previous
books include Microcosm and Wealth and Poverty.
He lives in Tyringham, Massachusetts.
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