Broadband Or Bust!
Broadband or Bust! Networking Society to Accelerate Economic Growth: A Discovery Inquiry Click here to download Adobe Acrobat Reader free
21st-Century War Economics
“The Republicans don’t have a clue how bad the economy is,” a Democratic congressional aide told us one late October night, savoring the vision of a gavel in Dick Gephardt’s hand. Then, slowly, he broke into a wide smile, like a happy hijacker dreaming of seventy succulent virgin interns awaiting him in paradise. Chiefly in the business of appraising enterprise Read More ›
The Faith of a Futurist
Every year I host a conference on the future of the Internet in a world of bandwidth abundance. On the last day, I hold a debate or panel on the religious significance of the technological disputes. Every year, some attendees object to this insertion of theology into the midst of a meeting otherwise devoted to the higher vocations of microelectronics Read More ›
Speaking of George Gilder
Finally, a Gilder book for those of us who want to get right to the point! From tapes, transcripts, and corporate conclaves, you get the spoken wit and wisdom of George Gilder — on money and morals, technology and telecom. It’s all here, and it’s easy to use. A little over a third of Speaking of George Gilder consists of speeches and Read More ›
Don’t Crush Wireless Innovation
In the next few weeks the Federal Communications Commission will decide whether the U.S. telephone industry unleashes a new birth of competition, entrepreneurship and innovation. When Congress completed last year’s comprehensive revision of telecommunications legislation–the first in 60 years–pundits foresaw a flowering of new services in the telecommunications marketplace. The Baby Bells were to take on the long distance companies, Read More ›
Regulating the Telecosm
The general theme of my argument is, Don’t solve problems. When you solve problems, you end up subsidizing your weaknesses, starving your strengths, and achieving expensive mediocrity, and in a competitive global economy expensive mediocrity goes out of business. Washington has a compulsion to solve problems, and that is really the basic flaw of the Washington approach to problems-it tries Read More ›
Inventing the Internet again
In the early 1960s, working on America’s second-strike capability, Paul Baran conceived the Internet. Now he wants to save the Net itself. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE as an engineer, Paul Baran was “scared stiff.” That can happen to people who stumble too close to the abyss of 20th-century history and look over the edge. Born in 1926 Read More ›
Fiber Keeps its Promise
Editor’s note: Four years ago, Forbes ASAP published its first issue with a stunning prophecy by contributing editor George Gilder. Fiber optics, said George, had the potential to carry 25 trillion bits per second down a single strand. This represented a ten-thousandfold leap in carrying capacity over the 2.5 billion bits “barrier” long assumed by most experts in the field. Read More ›
Feasting on the Giant Peach
WILL THE INTERNET COLLAPSE? NO WAY! What is all this commotion in Massachusetts? The very source of the Arpanet at Bolt, Beranek & Newman — the cradle of the Internet — Massachusetts is falling to the forces of Auntie Spiker and Aunt Sponge. These are the mingy ladies in the Roald Dahl story who rejoiced in James’s Giant Peach as Read More ›
Goliath at Bay
GOLIATH IN THE VALE of Elah roared his contempt at the weapons and zeal of David: “Do you think me a dog that you contest me with sticks and stones?” Bill Gates, the Goliath of software, sees himself similarly beset by zealous rivals with risible weapons. Entering his modest second-floor office on the edge of the Microsoft campus on a Read More ›
Angst and Awe on the Internet
Well, it had to happen. As the Internet emerges as the central nervous system of global capitalism, the Luddite left is bursting into “flames” against the microcosm and telecosm, against interlinked computers and the global radiance of electromagnetic communications. This rising resistance resonates with the press coverage that has long lavished attention on the excesses of the Net. Richard Shaffer Read More ›
George Gilder and His Critics II
Every now and then, timing is all. Take George Gilder’s Aug. 28 Forbes ASAP piece, “The Coming Software Shift.” Lucky Forbes readers got their copies in mid-August, smack between the year’s two biggest technology events — Netscape’s record-hot IPO and the release of Windows 95. Gilder used the timing to explain why creative energy and profits in desk-top software would Read More ›