Business Week Online looks “Into the Gildercosm”

This article, published by Business Week Online, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder:

George Gilder recently stopped by for a visit, and he's worked up about the semiconductor industry. His language is as messianic as ever. Forget the telecosm. Get ready for the "planetary sensorium."

By that, Gilder means a world dotted with billions of interconnected imaging sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. A camera chip in every dark alley. An RFID tag on every piece of merchandise. Data whizzing around the globe to be correlated with other data. No crime unseen. No movement of goods undetected.

Right off the bat, let's deal with the obvious: privacy.

Gilder: "Most of human history occurred in small villages where there were periodically wildfire rumors that ended in someone being burned as a witch. All this stuff makes it possible to document that you didn't commit the crime."