Technologies will disappear and which will prevail His sentencesĪre strung together with words like nation-state, Toffler seems to lump all technology together as just this 'force' altering politics and business. But when Toffler starts to talk, the difference between him and Gilder becomes clear - Gilder is just, well, more specific.
Toffler is perhaps the most famous futurist of them all Gilder Alvin Toffler is about 7 feet tall and no thicker than a broomstick as he stands on the stage his white shirt cuffs hang far down out of his jacket sleeves and his bony hands hang far down from his shirt cuffs. He's convinced them that the future will beĪ very different place, but they can't think what toĭo about it other than to call their travel agents and cancel their vacation plans.Īfter the ice cream cone, the scarecrow. Forty minutes later, when the monitors in front of Gilder flash "Your time is up," he's still going strong, and the audience is in a state of frightened shock. Wait, that's not quite right - he's a real man's kind of thinker. One of the few technology writers to really do his homework, George Gilder is a real thinking man's thinking man. Gilder doesn't pause for them - he's electrified, practically speaking in tongues, testifying to theĬoming doomsday for cable television programming at the hands of the DirecTV satellite. It lacks telling detail it's all about places he's taught and titles of books he's written. Others glance at their conference programs, checking Gilder's profile. His arms thrust forward and back, pumping chugga-chugga like he's doing the Locomotion. His sentences flow easily, his voice starts to boom. Taken together, this phenomenal advance will topple all centralised institutions. The millennium promises a billion transistors on a single sliver of silicon, 700 bitstreams in a single thread of fibre and a cellular infrastructure a thousand times cheaper than today's. Gilder starts to speak about the coming revolution in sand (silicon), glass (fibre) and air (wireless). In the air like a maraschino cherry on top of his head. When George Gilder strides in from the right and stands behind the cone in the blue light, he looks like a scoop of blueberry ice cream, and the ball microphone dangles The podium is a big, brushed steel cone, narrow at the base and flaring out as it goes up. A blue spotlight focuses on centre stage. Compared to the other speakers, George Gilder will probably come across as an extremist. If you were to plot them all on a chart, when you came to plotting Gilder's coordinates you'd have to get another piece of paper. George Gilder, by contrast, is way off to the right.
He gets to make irrefutable remarks like "government should do more good than harm."
Andy Grove, as a businessman, is the 'practical' speaker - he gets the middle ground and is therefore guaranteed to come across as reasonable. Thurow is the most liberal, if you can ever call an economist liberal. They've all forked over $375 (£234) to hear Andy Grove and Lester Thurow. The crowd are wearing gray suits and polished shoes, which suggests they're not techies - they're just ordinary businessmen and women who walked here from Montgomery Street. He's being paid almost US$20,000 (£12,500) to speak to the Millennium Conference - and he's worried about delivering another clunker. This morning George Gilder is down in San Francisco. Yesterday in Vancouver, the speech went badly. Issue 2.03 - March 1996 Finding Gilder's Faith By Po Bronson WIRED 2.03: Finding Gilder's Faith F E A T U R E S
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