The New Prophet of a Techno Faith Rich in Profits
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/23/technology/23GILD.html
September 23, 2000
The New Prophet of a Techno Faith Rich in Profits
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
t is best to begin with a confession. I am a Gilderite. Each month, along with some 65,000 stock traders, technophiles, computer scientists and optical engineers, I await the arrival of an eight-page newsletter in which George Gilder — a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, a former Male Chauvinist of the Year (as proclaimed by NOW) and currently a widely applauded (and occasionally derided) "technological guru" — celebrates the dawn of a new age. As Mr. Gilder proclaimed in one recent issue, "Weirder and weirder becomes the world."
His abiding subjects are computers, satellite companies, the Internet and optical networks. The technical details encompass gigabit Ethernets, silicon-germanium chips and Raman amplifiers. Arcane abbreviations like ASIC, WDM, NAS and FPBA abound. But this technological apparatus inspires Mr. Gilder to construct elaborate visionary metaphors: he speaks with almost Biblical orotundity about "wings of light" and "redemptive technology." Like a Joseph interpreting some hypermodern dream, he prophesies future abundances and scarcities. Like some antediluvian Noah, he awaits a transformed world. "After the floods of bandwidth," he asks, "who will greet the dawn and the dove?"
Oh yes, he also picks stocks, which is one reason subscribers pay $295 a year for his densely packed homilies. He discovers which companies resonate with his "paradigm" and anoints them "telecosmic." Minutes after being posted at his Internet site (www.gildertech.com), the companies' stock prices rise vertiginously (until, days later, they gradually retreat to less exalted levels). This has become known on the Street as "the Gilder effect." And it takes place because, so far at least, Mr. Gilder has proved to be uncommonly prescient, most famously for championing the wireless technology company Qualcomm at a time when most analysts mocked its hubris and doubted its future.
Mr. Gilder, who attacked feminism in the 1970's, heralded supply-side economics in the 1980's and championed the triumph of the microchip a decade later, takes pride in avoiding what he calls "the heat of the herd." But his iconoclastic message doesn't prevent those of us who read his newsletter from becoming part of a new herd. Earlier this month, 400 industry leaders and acolytes paid almost $4,000 apiece to debate Mr. Gilder's brave new world at a conference in Lake Tahoe. And now, Mr. Gilder's new book, "Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize the World," seeks adherents beyond the converted.
If, for some, Mr. Gilder's pronouncements have the weight of Scripture, it is not simply because they promise untold this-worldly benefits. If a savvy technological analyst were to hail the spread of optical fiber, which allows the passage of more information in a single strand of glass in a month than currently swamps the whole Internet in a year; or to recommend some pioneering companies along the way — well, all that would be eminently sufficient. But for Mr. Gilder, such observations just touch the surface. There are "deep rules" underneath.
"Listen to the technology," Mr. Gilder preaches; it will disclose order where there seemed only chaos. In each age, Mr. Gilder says, technology creates abundances and scarcities, leading the way to large-scale transformations.
So we are now leaving the microcosmic age in which inexpensive silicon chips are freely wasted (even tossed into disposable cameras and toys); we are entering the telecosmic age, in which the defining abundance will be bandwidth.
Bandwidth roughly determines how much information can be transmitted in a given time. In Mr. Gilder's analysis, fairly soon it will be possible to transmit almost infinite amounts of information instantaneously. The seemingly invulnerable worlds of television, radio and telephony will be swept away in a tsunami of light-borne data.
This vision is so intoxicating, it can be difficult to resist the messianic temptations that have long been associated with new technologies. David F. Noble, a history professor at York University in Toronto, has pointed out in "The Religion of Technology" that the technological enterprise, though widely considered a product of rationalist science, is in fact — and has always been — "an essentially religious endeavor."
Monasteries were centers of medieval engineering. The English scientist Robert Boyle wrote a treatise entitled "Some Physico-Theological Considerations About the Possibility of the Resurrection." Charles Babbage, the father of the modern computer, believed that advances in the "mechanical arts" provided "some of the strongest arguments in favor of religion." Samuel F. B. Morse's first words sent over his newly invented telegraph were, "What hath God wrought?" (His father, the founder of the American Bible Society, would no doubt have approved of the message.)
Mr. Noble also suggests that every American transportation revolution has been associated with ardent Masons: canals (DeWitt Clinton and Stephen Van Rensselaer); steamboats (Robert Fulton); railroads (George Pullman, Edward Harriman, James J. Hill); the automobile (Henry Ford); the airplane (Charles Lindbergh) and space flight (at least half a dozen astronauts). Mr. Gilder, who has lectured the Vatican on quantum physics, seems at home in this roster.
Technology, with its almost magical abilities to transform the material world, may even encourage a form of gnosticism, in which transcendence over matter is sought through mystical contemplation. In a recent book, "Techgnosis," Erik Davis points out that computer hackers use terms like "deep magic" and "casting the runes" to describe their craft.
And gnostic myth, Mr. Davis suggests, is not far from the libertarian dreams associated with the early years of the Internet, as visionaries heralded the transformation of human nature. In Mr. Gilder's view, the technological entrepreneur may also be considered a gnostic visionary of sorts, defying familiar logic, able to leap over the constraints of time and space in a single bound of faith.
But here's the hard part: the world is being transformed, but what will be left after the flood? Breathless expectations of futurists usually end up being dashed on the shoals of the mundane.
One visionary, for example, recently predicted that police officers would someday have an organically grown bulletproof skin layer, neglecting to mention that the bad guys might have organically grown viral bullets that dissolve the skin on contact. Another seer offers the prospect of a computer screen that will act as a personal butler, helping one get dressed in the morning — though who among us has ever yearned for pixelated assistants to choose our wardrobes?
Mr. Gilder generally avoids such trivial speculation, suggesting instead that business in the new age will be transformed, the salvationary spirit of the entrepreneur will soar and the roving ambitions of individuals will find resonance in an incandescent web of knowledge. Freedom will grow, wisdom thrive and wealth spread. What more could a prophet of a "redemptive technology" possibly desire? Forget the mundane: in the new age, cloaked in wings of light, we Gilderites will dwell in telecosmic utopia.
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