The Gilder Friday Letter - 10/20/06
[unfiltered, uncut and unedited; some quotation marks and apostrophes come across as question marks due to translation issues ]
The Gilder Friday Letter v.268.0
HEADLINES:
- The Week / Gilder on Petacomputing
- Friday Feature / Mead on Quantum Computing
- Friday Blogger Bonus / Final Thoughts on Telecosm 2006
- Readings /
The Week / Gilder on Petacomputing
Dan Richardson, ?A Technologist?s Take On Google, The Dalles, and the Future of It All?: There?s been plenty of ink spilled about the almighty Google and its new, semi-secret plant in The Dalles. But Wired magazine?s article by George Gilder, this issue, lays out the technology, the competition between search engines and the future of the Internet ? what Gilder calls the ?new global ganglia of computers and cables? ? as clearly as I?ve seen anywhere.
Gilder?s answer to The Question ? why in the world did Google locate their server farm in The Dalles? ? is the most cogent yet?
Read Richardson?s Complete Article:
newwest.net
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Michael Feldman, HPC Wire, ?PlayStations and Petaphilia?: "We're all petaphiles now, plugged into a world of petabytes, petaops, petaflops."
So writes George Gilder in an article published in Wired magazine this past week. Gilder, the publisher of the Gilder Technology Report, talks about the effect of petascale computing on the Internet and how different rates of technological advancements are interacting to favor the reestablishment of centralized computing at the expense of the personal computer. Enormous data centers are being built to feed our growing appetite for computing and information.
As Moore's Law loses ground to the much more rapid advancements in storage capacity and communication bandwidth, processing data becomes more expensive relative to storing data and moving it around. According to Gilder this favors locating the computing infrastructure closer to cheaper power sources so that the scarce and energy-hungry CPU and memory resources can be used more efficiently.
Says Gilder: "In the PC era, the winners were companies that dominated the microcosm of the silicon chip. The new age of petacomputing will be ruled by the masters of the remote data center - those who optimally manage processing power, electricity, bandwidth, storage, and location."
Companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and others are the benefactors of this paradigm shift, while Microsoft is seen as a company that is attempting to transition from the old desktop computing model to the new data center model ?
Read Feldman?s Complete Article:
hpcwire.com
Read George Gilder?s Wired Article:
wired.com
Year-to-date returns for THE GILDER TECHNOLOGY REPORT?s ?Telecosm Technologies? companies continue to impress
?George, You are always the first to get it right.? ? Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
?Gilder is very stimulating even when I disagree with him, and most of the time I agree with him.?
? Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft
?When it comes to predicting which technologies will not only survive, but prosper, no one I know has been more right than George Gilder.? ? Steve Forbes, Chairman, Forbes Inc.
?George Gilder is a pioneer in the field of technology writing with his books and newsletters and has great insight in the industry and its leaders. I will always be indebted to him for his early recognition and writing about Qualcomm as a world-dominant company.? ? GTR Subscriber
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GILDER TECHNOLOGY REPORT TODAY:
gildertech.com
Friday Feature / Carver Mead on Quantum Computing
George Gilder (10/18/06): I urge you to listen Carver Mead?s Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2006 speech. Delivered in the quiet hypnotic, low and slow tones of its polymathic author, it climaxed Telecosm 10 and impelled us toward all the Telecosms of the future.
Download the audio MP3 file, available on:
blog.gildertech.com
Excerpt: "I?ve said this every year for the last ten years. With all of our yotta yottas we still can?t do the computation that?s done by a common housefly. The DARPA ?grand challenge? which filled up an entire van with computing stuff of the latest sort was pathetic compared with a housefly. For those of you who have tried to kill them, they?re not too easy to get rid of ? You may think they?re stupid, but not nearly as stupid as our computers. And they do all that on a few milliwatts.
"If you really want more bang for a given amount of energy ? more information processed, the real metric of ?goodness? in this world ? you divide the computation into more and more parallel things that go slower. You don?t try to make each one go a little faster; you just put lots and lots of them in parallel. But actually, we don?t really know how to do that ?
"What is it about that goo in the brain of a fly that can do that? We have all of our yotta yottas and we?re still not able to do it ?
"There?s nothing about the physics of goo that works with ions and membranes that can?t work with electrons and insulars. There is no reason that if we understood what this absolutely fantastic, remarkable structure is doing, that we can?t learn from it and develop a computational paradigm, which is completely different from anything that we know or have even imagined. That?s what got me into neuroscience. Because in the end, we have to make more and more parallel systems. The degree if parallelism is, in the end, going to be the efficacy of our information processing systems, and here is a working system that has the ultimate parallelism.
So as we look at the second decade of the Telecosm, I would submit to you that we?re not really burned out. I think there is plenty to think about."
Did you miss Telecosm '06? Or did you attend, and find yourself wishing you could experience once again the musical thrill of a lifetime? Pay a visit to Jeff Stambovsky's Telecosm Songbook!! You'll hear musical tributes to George Gilder and other Telecosm luminaries of the past ten years, the people who made the future come true. Listen now at www.telecosmsongs.blogspot.com.
Friday Blogger Bonus / Final Thoughts on Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2006
Andrew Schmitt, Nyquist Capital (10/16/06): Going into this conference I was skeptical. I was not expecting an objective discussion about technology. I was expecting a forum where Gilder portfolio companies are given the microphone and allowed to preach to the Gilder priesthood, and a forum where dissidents to the Gilder viewpoint are viewed with skepticism. I was wrong.
Friday evening, I spoke at length (after about 2-3 too many beers) with George Gilder and [Telecosm Master of Ceremonies] Jeff Stambovsky. After speaking with them it was clear my perceptions of how they run the conference were false. Rather than stifle debate, it appears they were mildly disappointed there was not more disagreement and debate at times. In an era of Reg FD this is one of the few venues striving to create real debate and discussion about company claims. Some of my previous comments were wrong and I stand corrected.
Unlike standard Wall St. conferences where portfolio companies are trotted in to give their 30 min pitch and allowed to retreat for limited questioning, companies that present at Gilder are subjected to the full force of criticism of the moderator, their peers, and as a last resort, smartasses in the audience like myself. The folks asking the questions are not analysts, but industry insiders best positioned to ask pointed questions. This creates a far better environment for evaluating companies and forming/altering your opinions on industries.
This process is by far the biggest competitive advantage the conference has. It may be too effective, and actually keep some companies away who prefer a more controlled environment.
I was not expecting such technical depth and breadth among some attendees. It was refreshing to go to a conference where everyone is not a tech drone. It?s rare you can go from talking about the requirements for VLAN tag stacking to discussing the need for consumer medical choice at a conference? Where else can you see Michael Milken, Carver Mead, Steve Forbes, John Rutledge combined with senior management from leading optical component companies.
Read Schmitt?s complete blog and additional Telecosm write-ups:
nyquistcapital.com
RELATED READING
Scott Lemon, ?Net Neutrality from Gilder?s Telecosm?: Bummer. I just realized that I missed the 10th Annual Telecosm Conference held by George Gilder and Steve Forbes. This has always been one of my favorite conferences, where I'm always stimulated with something technology oriented that I never would have thought of. I'm really into discovering what I don't know that I don't know.
The one thing that I was glad to find is that they are releasing the conference proceedings as podcasts ... good move. The first one is on Net Neutrality and has an all-star line-up of speakers. I'm downloding it now? tabletpcthoughts.blogspot.com
The Gildertech Blog, blog.gildertech.com | Logon now to see what?s new.
Readings /
Lessig-nificant
handsoff.org
Level 3 Elopes With Broadwing
businessweek.com
Future of Computing
krasnow.blogspot.com
George Gilder on The Information Factory
channel9.msdn.com
America The Prosperous
blogs.forbes.com
How to Finance the World?s Poorest Citizens
forbes.com
Paging Dr. Robot
wired.com
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