Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: TELECOSM: How Infinite Bandwidth will Revolutionize Our World by George Gilder ISBN: 0-684-80930-3 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 11 September, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.53 (45 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Too much science, not enough business
Comment: This is the first I've read from Gilder. I must admit that I heard of his great reputation as a trendspotter in technology. But it didn't prepare me for what Telecosm was all about.
I expected to read about the wonders that bandwidth will bestow on the average consumer. It might also provide some interesting bits of detail for corporations striving to create value in this constantly changing tech marketplace.
However, I couldn't get past page 52. These were the last few lines that finally made me shut the cover:
"To obtain the desired infrared emission, Snitzer used the rare-earth elements neodymium, praseodymium, and erbium. Neodymium turned out to fluoresce at 800 nanometers, praseodymium at 1,320 nanometers, and erbium at 1,550 nanometers--all in the infrared bands that fit the communications sweet spots of optical fiber."
I didn't need the hardcore facts about broadband communications.
This book might be useful for those of scientific endeavors. But I recommend that anyone attempting to learn about a tech business perspective should look elsewhere.
Rating: 3
Summary: ranges from compulsively readable to mind numbingly annoying
Comment: Gilder's writing style is verbiose and lively. He poetically waxes mad philosophical luminescence, resonating and pontificating over the coming harmonies of bandwidth abundance, the ascendant technologies that act as its conduits, and wives thereof, to be grossly humane.
It was cool at first to read such a colorful account of hi-tech, but over the course of the book his manic style wore on me a bit. Towards the end there was a lack of solid material and everything started to sound repetitive and overwrought. Still, this is a fast read, and even though it's a bit dated in the short term, over the long term a lot of his predictions will probably turn out to be true. And although none of his predictions are *that* earth-shattering, this is still an interesting account of what the future world of telecommunications will look like.
Rating: 3
Summary: Must I say, a few incandescent fish in a wide prolix sea...
Comment: Ah. The language of Gilder! In a typically verbose, self-confessed 'prophetic mode of the inspired historian' he makes the reader wade through an egotistical, occasionally insightful and entertaining, and at times even annoyingly predictable view of the future of the networked world that he believes is no less consequential than the most important breakthroughs in physics.
Expect to work through stuff like: "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."
A perfectly predictable notion that bandwidth will revolutionize our world (what a surprise!) is fleshed out into 20 putative laws of the telecosm that provide provocative rules to live by. Some of Gilder's reasoning is tenuous, and many of his conclusions are obvious. For instance, the Law of Instantaneous Information builds on the fact that the speed of light is immutable and that our life spans are limited. Combining those facts, Gilder grapples to arrive at the terribly simple idea that companies should strive to save time for their customers. Uh huh.
The flow of the book can be as daunting as the prose. Essentially this is 4 books in 1 --
1. An investment guide, which really should be skipped for your own good. For instance, we were convinced over a span of dozen pages that JDS Uniphase would be the Intel of the networking world. The equity, at that time US$ 20 a share, now gets by at $3.
2. A look at the world that infinite bandwidth is creating, which you most likely already know much more about than to subject yourself to this verbiage.
3. A history of scientific discovery. Ironically, this is the only section with pockets of amusing anecdotal material, particularly a section on the development of science where he tells gossipy tales that show how entrepreneurs developed the technologies that are forming the telecosm.
4. A textbook at the end, with a glossary that you could lay end on end from Tokyo to Tanzania.
If you really must read this supposedly epic work, this last section (the textbook section) is where you could consider starting off with. It contains a compendium of his 20 laws and their underlying assumptions.
Otherwise you can pretty much pass this by, assured that you haven't really missed much that you haven't already read in The Economist, WSJ, Business2 etc.
 |
Title: Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution In Economics And Technology by George Gilder ISBN: 067170592X Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 15 July, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance by George Gilder ISBN: 0743205472 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: The Cathedral & the Bazaar (paperback) by Eric S. Raymond ISBN: 0596001088 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
