Being George Gilder

Meandering in the head of an absent-minded techno-prophet

All of the architects of the Telecosm are nestled in this placid elevated woodland milieu to bask in the beauty of their inspired creations, protected from the pandemonium of commercial business and the economic realities of funding and cash flow and revenue and profit and loss.

There is too much beauty in this room. We are graced by the presence of the forgers of fiber, the builders of bandwidth, the innovators of IP, the champions of chips, the saviors of spectrum and the liberators of the last mile.

I have forgotten my shoes. And shirked stockings. I am bare of foot.

These minds are proving the paradigm of a place created from the fruits of the earth and the atmosphere, fashioning fiber from sand into silicon and constructing complex concoctions of glass and mirrors (or bubbles) that port populations of nothing but lasers and lambdas and light, beautiful and wondrous miracles of illumination. I am inundated by the insinuations of the Fibersphere.

Reminders to self: Prescience is prudently preceded by pressing. To innovate is to iron.

There's Forbes over there, and Karlgaard, whose journal does justice to the vision and carries the word of wonder to the world. It is the singular voice; other outlets are obsolete and should be ousted. And Vigilante, who harnesses my harangues, rewrites my rants and trims my tomes.

And here's the new elite, the barons of bandwidth and the terabit tycoons: the minds behind Sycamore and Ciena and Xros and Corvis. Those luminous leaders, whose companies ride on wings of light. Many of them grace my List of ascendant technologies and have come here to justify their Telecosmic existence and pay homage to its creator.

Now there's a post-incumbent wireless Hesse, linking the last mile with lasers. His company hasn't made the List yet but has been graced by the Effect. But Hindery's company is on there, traversing nautical miles, braving plankton to connect continents with luminous layers of glass and an overabundance of dripping wet bandwidth. And there with them is Tanzi, who listened to the Word and took it to heart, modified the metro, took the cities by storm, made the grubby streets shimmer with luminosity.

The loyal flock of the Fibersphere. But no Nacchio this time. No Joltin' Joe, all attitude and independence and resistance. An interrupter, a usurper, an uncontrollable rogue. And no Mandl, and no Evslin. None of the delegates of the old guard here to convince us of their conversion. And next year we'll excommunicate Shafei, who dominates discussion and challenges my disciples.

Infernal, flailing, irrepressible hands! Channeling excitement, betraying my significance, reducing me to ridicule.

And all the storage superiors are here, too, heading their own category for caching and carrying - the CTOs from Sun and Akamai and Novell and StorageNetworks. And the chip makers, shrinking the strength of mountains to microscopic proportions to help propel the broad-band explosion from within the minutiae. And the spectrum stretchers, manipulating code and time and paving the waves with wideband wherewithal.

They're all here! O, the overwhelming optimism! All the high powers that light the ground and scorch the sky, they have all gathered around me in Telecosmic worship to realize the revelation. So far from everything, so removed from reality. Here, commemorating the end of the bits-per-second era and a world of cumbersome circuits. Here, ensconced in fleece vests, suspended in time and wrapped in the warmth of our own successes, we will rejoice and revel in the efflorescence. We are the guardians of light.

Now I must go figure out where I parked my car.