Hardcover - 351 pages (September 11, 2000)
George Gilder, the tech-friendly author of the well-received chip treatise,
The Meaning of the Microcosm, and publisher of the Gilder Technology Report,
has brought forth Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our
World, another work of technical prose that"s sure to appeal to both
techheads and nontechnical folks alike.
Telecosm predicts a revolutionary new era of unlimited bandwidth: it
describes how the "age of the microchip"--dubbed the "microcosm"--is ending
and leaving in its wake a new era--the "telecosm," or "the world enabled and
defined by new communications technology."
Speaking like a prophet of the bandwidth deity, Brother Gilder lays down the
telecosmic commandments--the Law of the Telecosm, Gilder"s Law, the Black
Box Law, and so on. He describes the gaggle of industry players--from cable
and satellite to telephone and computer--who populate the telecosm arena.
Books about telecommunications rarely are quotable, but Telecosm at times is
a brilliant example of magical and (believe it or not) mystical prose.
Gilder"s philo-techno perspective makes for interesting and
thought-provoking musings: "Wrought of sand, oxygen, and aluminum, the three
most common substances in the Earth"s crust, the microprocessor distills
ideas as complex as a street map of America onto a sliver of silicon the
size of a thumbnail. This gift of the quantum is a miracle of compression."
And, finally, he describes precisely what the telecosm will create among its
congregation: "The gift of the telecosm is a miracle of expansion: grains of
sand spun into crystalline fibers and woven into worldwide webs."
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