Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth AbundanceThe 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 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. |
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Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World George F. Gilder No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
Andreessen AT&T bandwidth bandwidth abundance Bell bits broadband browser bytes cable carrier CDMA cellular channel chip circuit communications components connections copper cost customers devices Digital Subscriber Line Division Multiple Access Division Multiplexing Doerr domain dumb network Ebbers electromagnetic electronic engineers Ethernet fiber optics fiber-optic frequencies gigabits per second gigahertz glass Global Crossing Globalstar industry Intel Internet Java Kalkoven laser layer Lucent Maxwell’s megabits Memory Metcalfe microcosm microprocessor Microsoft microwave miles Milken million modems Moore’s law move Nortel operating packets paradigm percent petabits photons processors protocol Qualcomm quantum Qwest radio routers satellite scarcity semiconductor server Shafei signals silicon spectrum speed of light storewidth switches TDMA telco telecommunications telecosm Teledesic telephone TeraBeam thousand tion traffic transistors transmission Uniphase users voice Wavelength Division Multiplexing wavelengths waves Winnick wireless wires
Popular passages
Page 118 - The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trials carried by the cells of the brain.
Page 132 - And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine.
Page 83 - It will be as portable as your watch and as personal as your wallet. It will recognize speech and convert it to text. It will plug into a slot in your car and navigate streets. It will collect your news and your mail and if you wish, it will read them to you. It will browse the World Wide Web and download information as needed.
Page 95 - And I cherish more than anything else the Analogies, my most trustworthy masters. They know all the secrets of Nature, and they ought to be least neglected in Geometry.
Page 19 - In 1865, Maxwell stated his theory of light. Before the close of 1888 it is utterly and completely verified. Its full development is only a question of time, and labour, and skill. The whole domain of Optics is now annexed to Electricity, which has thus become an imperial science.
Page 334 - At the same time, the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye is confined to a very narrow band.
Page 163 - You can use the spectrum as much as you want as long as you don't collide with anyone else or pollute it with high-powered noise or other nuisances. In general, the FCC should not be in the business of licensing spectrum. It should instead issue driver's licenses for radios. A heavy burden of proof should fall on any service providers with blind or high-powered systems, who maintain that they cannot operate without an exclusive license, who want to build on the beach and keep everyone else out of...
Page 312 - A domain name that has an IP address (A) record associated with it. This would be any computer system connected to the Internet (via full or part-time, direct or dial-up connections) ie nw.com, www.nw.com".
Page 3 - The telecosm launches us beyond the fuzzy electrons and frozen pathways of the microcosm to a boundless realm of infinite undulations. Beyond the copper cages of existing communications, the telecosm dissolves the topography of old limits and brings technology into a boundless, elastic new universe, fashioned from incandescent oceans of bits on the electromagnetic spectrum...
Page 71 - The Rise of the Stupid Network," David Isenberg, formerly with AT&T Labs, describes an attempt to improve circuit-switched voice quality as much as possible in the context of the PSTN's current network architecture: If we had not been constrained by network architecture, the easiest way would have been to increase the sampling rate or change the coding algorithm. But to actually do this, we would have had to change every piece of the telephone network except the wires. So we had to work within the...