IP: More on George Gilder: Techno-Tyrant

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 20:30:49 -0500
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> From: "David S. Isenberg" <isen () isen com>
> Subject: More on George Gilder: Techno-Tyrant
>
> Dave,
>
> I'd like to give the folks on the IP list another view of George
> Gilder.  I take exception to the title and tone of the Seattle
> Weekly article (Techno-Tyrants by Emily White) that was recently
> posted to the IP list.
>
> George Gilder and I have been friends and colleagues for over two
> years.  I respect his recent work on the revolution in information
> processing and communications.  Notwithstanding, I view this
> work with appropriate skepticism, and I encourage others to do the
> same.  That said, the "Techno-Tyrants" article says nothing --
> zero, zilch, null, zip -- about the merits, pro- or con-,
> of George's recent work.
>
> I came to know George Gilder because my "Rise of the Stupid Network"
> (1997) was consistent with (and extended) a lot of the things George
> had been thinking about.  Because of this, he invited me to speak
> at his first Telecosm meeting.  When news of this invitation
> got out, I got it from both sides -- (1) AT&T would not let me speak,
> and (2) my friends took me aside and whispered, "sexist pig" and "to
> the right of Atilla the Hun".
>
> I was concerned, but George had already bought me a plane ticket,
> the Telecosm agenda looked great, and George said, "Why don't
> you come anyway," so I decided to go (but not speak).
>
> The night before George's first-ever Telecosm meeting, he and
> I had a long, leisurely, relaxed dinner.  (I was struck by this
> generous gesture -- if it was *my* first big conference, any
> relaxation on the night before would've been out of the question.)
>
> During dinner, we "talked tech" and giggled at the several
> sillinesses of AT&T.  In addition, I expressed doubts
> about some of George's political positions, his association
> with Steve Forbes, etc.  His willingness to engage openly, his
> probing curiosity about what I had learned at AT&T, and his
> ability to accept and discuss my disagreements where they
> existed spoke more to me about who this man was than all of his
> past flamboyance.
>
> I still disagree with George Gilder on many issues.  And he remains my
> friend, even when I attack Steve Forbes from the floor at Telecosm.
> But our areas of agreement -- centered on the impacts of info-tech
> changes on business -- are much more substantial.
>
> George is a popularizer of technological advances that have the
> potential to upset the status quo, to change the world.  His intuitions
> about which technological advances are important, in my humble opinion,
> are startling and sensible most of the time.
>
> When George latches onto an idea, he has the capacity to drill down
> to theoretical bedrock to understand it.  For example, when he
> was writing his book "Microcosm", he took up residence
> at CalTech for several months to sit in on Carver Mead's classes
> on the foundations of VLSI.  Once he got the essence of it,
> he told the story of the microchip revolution in a style that
> made Mead's genius work accessible to a much wider audience.
> Maybe not everybody; it must've been too deep for "Techno-Tyrants"
> author Emily White.
>
> George does not call himself a "futurist" or a "visionary."
> He describes himself as an author.  And as an author, his focus
> has shifted over the years.  This is not, as the article implies,
> some kind of deep character flaw.  Certainly nobody faults Tom Wolfe
> for being a Hell's Angel one year, an acid-head the next, an
> astronaut-wannabe the third and a Wall Street financial thinker
> the fourth.
>
> But let us suppose that Gilder does indeed suffer from
> flawed character, reasoning, and political correctness.
> Let's say that George Gilder is wrong on gender roles,
> wrong on supply-side economics, wrong on race, wrong on the
> environment.  (Certainly his writings in these areas are not
> consistent with my own beliefs much of the time!) Does this make
> him wrong on technology's impact on business and society?
>
> Let me answer with three anecdotes.
>
> 1. George's 1990 book, "Life after Television," spoke of a
> "teleputer", which had all the properties of today's web browser.
> I think he got it right -- in surprising detail -- five years before
> most of the rest of us had any idea what was coming.
>
> 2. The CEO of PMC-Sierra, a communications chip design company,
> told me that he didn't fully understand his own business until
> he read Gilder's "Microcosm."
>
> 3. The CEO of Metromedia Fiber Systems told me that the nodal
> event in founding his company was his reading of Gilder's "The
> Coming of the Fibersphere," in 1992 (in Forbes ASAP).
>
> The article's sniffing about sexism, right-wingism and
> white boy's clubs is disingenuous.  If people had been stopped
> by the political leanings of other innovators, then Shockley's
> views might have prevented our development of the transistor
> and the Nazis' would have prevented us from developing the
> rocket and the jet engine.  Look, Magellan was a *monarchist*
> fer crissake, but that doesn't make the world less round!
>
> Even when the topic is technology, George Gilder is not always
> right. No human is.  And I have seen him give speeches that are real
> clinkers.  But he is one of the world's great explainers of how the
> sweeping changes in today's information technology are shaping
> the next era of human history, and he is profoundly insightful
> often enough that *I* don't use quotes when I call him a visionary.
>
> David S. Isenberg -- http://isen.com
> ------------------------------------

****************************************************************************
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