George Gilder never met a new technology he didn't love. He's ecstatic these days to the point of religious frenzy about the expansion of electronic bandwidth. He was in love in the 80s with the power of your personal computer-the world he foresaw in the book, Microcosm. His new bandwidth bible is called Telecosm: about the fiber-optic networks that turn the old trickle of digital data into a flood of fire-hose intensity.
Except it's bigger than that, oceanic in dimensions and virtually religious in its implications. Beyond the copper cage of your aging computer, George Gilder writes of a new universe out there, boundless bits of information, accessible on gossamer threads of purest glass. It's not about computers anymore, or even that fiber-optic cable: it's about the telecosm itself and new cathedrals of consciousness built on light and air alone. We're talking with the inspired historian of the future, George Gilder, this hour on The Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
