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IP: More on George Gilder: Techno-Tyrant
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 08:36:03 -0500
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 20:30:49 -0500 To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu> From: "David S. Isenberg" <isen () isen com> Subject: More on George Gilder: Techno-Tyrant Dave, I'd like to give the folks on the IP list another view of George Gilder. I take exception to the title and tone of the Seattle Weekly article (Techno-Tyrants by Emily White) that was recently posted to the IP list. George Gilder and I have been friends and colleagues for over two years. I respect his recent work on the revolution in information processing and communications. Notwithstanding, I view this work with appropriate skepticism, and I encourage others to do the same. That said, the "Techno-Tyrants" article says nothing -- zero, zilch, null, zip -- about the merits, pro- or con-, of George's recent work. I came to know George Gilder because my "Rise of the Stupid Network" (1997) was consistent with (and extended) a lot of the things George had been thinking about. Because of this, he invited me to speak at his first Telecosm meeting. When news of this invitation got out, I got it from both sides -- (1) AT&T would not let me speak, and (2) my friends took me aside and whispered, "sexist pig" and "to the right of Atilla the Hun". I was concerned, but George had already bought me a plane ticket, the Telecosm agenda looked great, and George said, "Why don't you come anyway," so I decided to go (but not speak). The night before George's first-ever Telecosm meeting, he and I had a long, leisurely, relaxed dinner. (I was struck by this generous gesture -- if it was *my* first big conference, any relaxation on the night before would've been out of the question.) During dinner, we "talked tech" and giggled at the several sillinesses of AT&T. In addition, I expressed doubts about some of George's political positions, his association with Steve Forbes, etc. His willingness to engage openly, his probing curiosity about what I had learned at AT&T, and his ability to accept and discuss my disagreements where they existed spoke more to me about who this man was than all of his past flamboyance. I still disagree with George Gilder on many issues. And he remains my friend, even when I attack Steve Forbes from the floor at Telecosm. But our areas of agreement -- centered on the impacts of info-tech changes on business -- are much more substantial. George is a popularizer of technological advances that have the potential to upset the status quo, to change the world. His intuitions about which technological advances are important, in my humble opinion, are startling and sensible most of the time. When George latches onto an idea, he has the capacity to drill down to theoretical bedrock to understand it. For example, when he was writing his book "Microcosm", he took up residence at CalTech for several months to sit in on Carver Mead's classes on the foundations of VLSI. Once he got the essence of it, he told the story of the microchip revolution in a style that made Mead's genius work accessible to a much wider audience. Maybe not everybody; it must've been too deep for "Techno-Tyrants" author Emily White. George does not call himself a "futurist" or a "visionary." He describes himself as an author. And as an author, his focus has shifted over the years. This is not, as the article implies, some kind of deep character flaw. Certainly nobody faults Tom Wolfe for being a Hell's Angel one year, an acid-head the next, an astronaut-wannabe the third and a Wall Street financial thinker the fourth. But let us suppose that Gilder does indeed suffer from flawed character, reasoning, and political correctness. Let's say that George Gilder is wrong on gender roles, wrong on supply-side economics, wrong on race, wrong on the environment. (Certainly his writings in these areas are not consistent with my own beliefs much of the time!) Does this make him wrong on technology's impact on business and society? Let me answer with three anecdotes. 1. George's 1990 book, "Life after Television," spoke of a "teleputer", which had all the properties of today's web browser. I think he got it right -- in surprising detail -- five years before most of the rest of us had any idea what was coming. 2. The CEO of PMC-Sierra, a communications chip design company, told me that he didn't fully understand his own business until he read Gilder's "Microcosm." 3. The CEO of Metromedia Fiber Systems told me that the nodal event in founding his company was his reading of Gilder's "The Coming of the Fibersphere," in 1992 (in Forbes ASAP). The article's sniffing about sexism, right-wingism and white boy's clubs is disingenuous. If people had been stopped by the political leanings of other innovators, then Shockley's views might have prevented our development of the transistor and the Nazis' would have prevented us from developing the rocket and the jet engine. Look, Magellan was a *monarchist* fer crissake, but that doesn't make the world less round! Even when the topic is technology, George Gilder is not always right. No human is. And I have seen him give speeches that are real clinkers. But he is one of the world's great explainers of how the sweeping changes in today's information technology are shaping the next era of human history, and he is profoundly insightful often enough that *I* don't use quotes when I call him a visionary. David S. Isenberg -- http://isen.com ------------------------------------
**************************************************************************** Professor David Farber The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania 200 S. 33 rd Street Philadelphia PA 19104-6389 Off Use 1 215 327 8756 if no answer or no voicemail use 1 215 898 9508 Fax: 1 408 490 2720 ( touch 2 for fax or hit send) Home: POB 424 250 Good Hope Road (for Fedex) Home:+ 1 610 274 8292 voice; Fax +1 408 490 2720 ( touch 2 for fax or hit send) Landenberg PA 19350-0424 Primary occupation -- Tele-techno-yenta Home Page: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber My PGP Key fingerprint: B4F6 0DA4 D8C9 8C70 2012 1C6B C378 6836 F7FB 5EC9 Member of the USA President's Information Technology Advisory Committee -- PITAC Publisher and Editor of the IP List Member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Governor of the ICCC Visiting Professor of the Glocom Institute of Japan Fellow of the Cyberspace Law Institute Member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Advisor of the ASIA NETWORK RESEARCH (ANR) - Malaysia Member of the International visiting Committee of KRDL Singapore "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin, ~1784 "Photons have neither morals nor visas" -- Dave Farber 1994 "A revolution is not a dinner party." -- Mao Tse Tung "Farber is the Paul Revere of Cyberspace" -- Wired Magazine Sept 1996 "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." --- John Gilmore
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