Telecosm Audiobook By George Gilder cover art

Telecosm

How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World

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Telecosm

By: George Gilder
Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
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The Computer Age is over. After a cataclysmic global run of 30 years, it has given birth to the age of the telecosm - the world enabled and defined by new communications technology. Chips and software will continue to make great contributions to our lives, but the action is elsewhere. To seek the key to great wealth and to understand the bewildering ways that high-tech is restructuring our lives, look not to chip speed but to communication power, or bandwidth. Bandwidth is exploding, and its abundance is the most important social and economic fact of our time.

George Gilder is one of the great technological visionaries, and "the man who put the 's' in telecosm" (Telephony magazine). He is equally famous for understanding and predicting the nuts and bolts of complex technologies, and for putting it all together in a soaring view of why things change, and what it means for our daily lives. His track record of futuristic predictions is one of the best, often proving to be right even when initially opposed by mighty corporations and governments. He foresaw the power of fiber and wireless optics, the decline of the telephone regime, and the explosion of handheld computers, among many trends. His long-awaited Telecosm is a bible of the new age of communications. Equal parts science story, business history, social analysis, and prediction, it is the one book you need to make sense of the titanic changes underway in our lives.

©2000 by George Gilder (P)2000 by Blackstone Audiobooks, All Rights Reserved Investing & Trading Personal Finance Technology Investing Capitalism Socialism Government Money
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Performance was good but editing bad. Noticeable pauses litter the work which distract unnecessarily. Otherwise a great book

Great book but clunky editing

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This is a must-read for the full-stack marketer looking for a good foundation in telecommunications.

Explained simply, delightful stories

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Although this book was written in 2001 and I am listening to it in 2021, most of the technologies discussed have happened and continue to expand at an exponential pace. Mr Gilder had the ability to explain the development and commercialization of technologies that were only present in science fiction.

Today, these technologies are commonplace. What about the next 20 years? Megabit bandwidth will be available anyplace on Earth, the moon and Mars. This unlimited bandwidth will accelerate the pace of learning for everyone, and will drastically change the geopolitical makeup of all the world’s governments. Governments will not be able to push around the world’s illiterates since illiteracy will be almost non-existent. Fewer illiterate people will reduce the size of the “lower class” populations, while the “super rich” will be richer and more removed from the rest of the world’s population.

What will 2041 be like? War or peace, famine or food abundance, new nation states or fewer nations, one word government or a few mega-governments, socialism or democracies? What ever happens, increased communication will be at the center.

The world is getting smaller

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Gilder was a bet selling economic writer who became a famous technology writer and stock picker in the 90s. His stock picking has fallen down, but his technology writing is still excellent: he explains the physics and economics of the bandwidth revolution we are in the middle of, and does it in a compelling and understandable way.
Add 5 years (sometimes more) to his predictions and realize that the companies that developed the great technology don't always benefit from it.

Learn about broadband and wireless

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Good description of the emerging telecosm market from the 90s, especially for readers interested on the evolution of technological advancements.

Great book with strong insights.

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ISDN and DSL ,, this book has a couple of glimmers of hope but really not an inside look at the future of communications.

Not really ground breaking stuff here

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Shrugged. Not interesting when it was first released, and certainly no longer interesting today. There are many more important titles for your money today.

No longer relavent

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This book is a gem for historians. If you are longing for those bubble days, here's the book that let's you relive the nonsense. Play it on your home stereo at parties and laugh along with your friends and what you were crying about only two years ago. As an added bonus, you can memorize some of the lines from this comedy classic and use them as catch-phrases around the office water cooler. Your colleagues will say "where does she come up with this stuff? She's the coolest."

Seriously, it was borderline factual at points, did have some interesting and accurate history, but really smells of the euphoria of thse bygone days of yesteryear. If you find yourself wondering "what were we thinking", you can get the answer here. I really do recommend this book, but it certainly does not belong in Science, perhaps not in Information Age - Audible, please move this one to Comedy.

Telebubble

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