Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance

While "Telecosm" is now a bit dated, the analysis laid out in this book is interesting and sheds light on the potential for the world at large in an era of ubiquitous bandwidth. Gilder offers readers technical and business perspectives on a world of unlimited bandwidth, and does so in an engaging a readable manner.Things in the world in general, not to mention in the business and technical spheres, have changed dramatically since "Telecosm" was published in the year 2000. Despite the facts that bandwidth might not be as ubiquitous as projected and bandwidth availability might not have had the magnitude of the effects projected in this book, it is still worth a read.Well-research and logically-conveyed, "Telecosm" offers a unique historical viewpoint of a potential future.

If you would like to understand the history of Telecommunication industry this is a must have. Wow.

Is excellent as author's usual.

Many people have a point of view about how the telecommunications technology and industry will evolve, but few fully understand the principles and assumptions behind their own perspective. Telecosm is a valuable summary of the science, engineering, and most influential companies that have been leading the changes in telecommunications potential. Those who have an advanced understanding of the science can skip those sections (Part One) and still have an enjoyable read. Those who want to know the human side of the engineering will find many rewarding stories (Part Two).The only people who will be disappointed will be those looking at his thoughts about investments (Part Four and Appendix B). First, it takes too long to bring out a book for the investment ideas to be any good by the time they appear. The market will have moved on. Second, this book is not enough in the futurist mode for us to find the important seedlings that will dominate the future. The companies discussed favorably in this book are visible and understood by most high technology investors already. Third, these ideas have been discussed for many years by Mr. Gilder in a variety of formats so they will only surprise people who are not familiar already with Mr. Gilder's nearly-ubiquitous prognostications.Mr. Gilder has several strengths as a technology guru that are evident in Telecosm. First, he writes clearly, simply, and beautifully. No one else does it as well in this field. Second, he knows a lot of the people involved and can unveil the personalities and intellectual history in an engaging way, as a result. Third, he is a systems thinker, so he is adept at connecting one development to another in explaining his reasoning about why one thing or another has or will happen. In doing this, he pays his reader the compliment of leaving the reader with enough information to develop her or his own opinion on the same subject. Fourth, he comes at the information from several perspectives, and that makes it more accessible. Well done!No book is without flaws, and it may help you to know what some of the ones are in this book. First, he fails to follow the line of his technology arguments into related fields. For example, he makes a great case for universal wireless devices of all types in constant use, but doesn't go very far in talking about what some of the enabling technologies are. For example, analog chips are very important in extending the battery life of these devices, which bodes well for those who make those chips. Second, he tells you about a trend and doesn't talk about who the players are. For example, one of his 20 Laws (see Appendix A) is the Yellow Pages Law: 'The telecosm demands better and better directories . . . .' Yet he doesn't talk about the efforts to develop those directories. This should be one of biggest areas of developing value in the next ten years, yet it gets little attention in the text. Third, he seems a little overfocused on the telecommunications technology side of the telecommunications revolution. You get very little about the implications for mass storage technologies. With infinite virtually free bandwidth, companies can assemble far more data and put it into more useful forms than ever before. What are the key principles for making this new direction work? His customized information and advertising arguments are pretty simple and incomplete. Fourth, he seems to be dead wrong in at least a few places. For example, he says that television cannot survive. If we are carrying around portable devices that little screens, I have a hard time imagining that they will have the same emotional impact on us as the larger television screens. Also, there is a parallel development built on fiber optics for television-based connectivity that receives very little attention here.Perhaps the biggest gap here is in addressing what the company should do with its Internet presence who will benefit from and be affected by these technologies. For help in those areas,I suggest you read The Last Mile, From .com to .profit, and Community Building on the Web.After you are done with this book, ask yourself what key assumptions Gilder is making that could be totally wrong about an area of supreme importance for the future of your work. Then imagine how you can develop a business or organizational strategy that would allow you to outperform your competitors whether or not Gilder is right in those areas. Then ask yourself what he did not address that could be important to you, find out what assumptions are being made in those areas and again find a strategy robust enough to allow you to outperform despite your inability to forecast. That's the real payoff from a book such as this one.

From where you read this it will look like I have missed the bubble. After all, wasn't the Telecosm a phonemena of the now historic Internet bubble ? With change moving at the speed of light I am just starting to catch up on the products of the bubble era.In fact I was so caught up during the era that I think I made the transition from being an engineer to being a production line laborer in the manufacture of the Internet economy. So is Telecosm a product or even cause of the hype that has now deflated? It may seem so, but that's because no one saw the invisible hand (1) that really popped the inflated bubble.If there was a bubble, I think I was in it or near it. From 1997 through 2000 I was at first a Network Architect and later the Manager of Network Architecture at America Online. From the day that I first arrived at AOL I was caught up in the explosive growth of building the network. And later even my own personal life was affected as I found that being an engineer changed status when our culture not only accepted technology but openly admired it. This revelation first occurred to me when one of my best friends from college toasted me at his wedding rehersal dinner. He was thanking my colleagues and I at AOL for the service that was the medium for meeting his soon to be wife. It was called the nerds revenge. But it seems closer to what Gilder described. What was once witchery became not only accepted, but admired.I spoke at two Telecosm confences and had the priviledge of sharing the stage with Mr. Gilder at a Merryl-Lynch conference as well.I not only share Mr. Gilder's views, but dare say that at least my own views were solidified in my discussions either in person or over email with both him and the many people of the Telecosm that I met directly or indirectly through him.Although I completely agree with the vision of the Telecosm, I am probably the telecosmic pessimist. I am not the devils advocate, but just a pessimist. I believe in the same forces of change that he describes in Telecosm, but I suspect that instead of being used for the social good that the forces will be pushed to the worst extremes of capitalism. In hindsight this seems easy to explain the likes of Global Crossing and Enron.I would go even further to say that some of the service providers that surive today continue these practices. In fact it is they more than any others that contributed to the expansion of the bubble beyond the obvious capital potential of the Internet and telecommunications. Entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, investors, and people in every other occupation associated with the Internet made money from stock options of their Internet economy employers. The biggest difference between the engineers and other visionaries, and profiteers, can be determined by examining what they did with those profits. Profiteers held on and diversified. The engineers and visionaries believe (we still do) in the Telecosm. So we invested the profits back into new ventures. The rest is the modern history of Wall Street.Technology doesn't have to be complicated. Our best technologies are made easy to use. That's what engineers strive to do. But across the Telecosm are overly complex technologies. Particularly wireless technologies. If one can criticize the flow of an IP packet across the Internet, then the progress of a telephone call on a wireless system is truly an act of complexity and waste. As things stand today the escapees from AT&T, Lucent, et. al have fled to start-ups where they are making optics and IP not only more complicated, but even worse. Added to their complete misunderstanding of the simplicity of optics and the Internet is their need to want to "control" every pack on the Internet as if it were a telephone call. The result could be a system 1000 times more complex than the PSTN even though it should be 1000 times cheaper.The Telecosm is still here. The best is yet to come, but it is either a slow revolution or an evolution. Even though there are those of us who can stand the rate of change that it brings, we must battle those who resist. And that alone will make the difference between a revolution and an evolution.1. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations.

Marvelous. An absolutely fantastic look at the future, showing us what life will be like for our children.

I am a subscriber of Gilders'newsletter. After having read most of the book I feel that this book is just a paste and copy of his newsletters.For somebody new in the field of bandwith and storage this book is worth reading. It explains very clear that traditional telecom networks with 7 layers will be replaced by simple fibreoptics networks with intelligent terminals and that storage companies will have an even brighter future.