Information technology expert and Gilder Technology Group, Inc. President George Gilder told an audience of approximately 100 people about the problems of the information age in the Hinman Forum at Rockefeller Center last night.
"Television is going to die," Gilder said. "It is an awful, decrepit, horrendous technology that deserves to die."
Gilder, often described as one of the few technology writers to do his homework, explained that the Internet fosters a "first-choice culture that is moral, educational and creative."
He said that the government wants to save television because it is their favorite medium for their campaigns, but consumers will eventually demand to choose what they watch and read, causing a television phase-out.
Gilder also predicted that newspapers will flourish, probably electronically, as soon as display technology is as readable as paper. "Newspapers give the customers choice," he said.
Gilder explained Washington's basic flaw in its approach to problems within the telecommunication and digital technology industries is that it tries to solve the problem for them.
"Don't solve problems; pursue opportunities," he said.
Gilder said that it is necessary for markets and consumers to solve their own problems instead.
Gilder explained every era is marked by a key abundance and a key scarcity. He said the information era's scarcity is time and its abundance is microprocessors, due to a plummeting cost in their manufacture.
He said both the physical limit of the speed of light and the biological limit of life span are two important factors in the described time scarcity.
"Today, information technology is colliding with the speed of light," said Gilder.
Gilder said the communication satellite industry is now being forced to orbit lower flying satellites because information cannot be transmitted to and from earth quickly enough for impatient Internet users.
The problem of the human biological life span is also important, Gilder said.
He said that in previous eras, the importance of a consumer's time was neglected, but in the information age, technology efficiency is being increased to effectively enhance life span. Gilder said that the government has not caught up with technology's advances.
"The key goal of an information economy is entirely missed in the government's agenda," he said. "The tax system is a perfect example of a system that wastes the citizens' time."
Gilder also predicted all computers in the next decade will be single chip computers.
He explained that this change is necessary because of the limitation of the speed of light, which limits the speed of electron travel across silicon microchips.
At the end of the presentation, Tuck School student Ken Cohn '98 asked, "What are the implications of this technology in relation to the haves and have-nots? Will it widen the gap?"
"It will certainly help the have-nots," Gilder replied. "The Internet has all kinds of cultural resources. If you are a poor kid down a ghetto street, the Internet is a tremendous resource for you. It closes the gap."
He said that the Internet offers more promise for poor families than television, which destroys inner city youth by forcing them to watch "mindless trash," he said.
George Gilder, who has one daughter at Dartmouth, is a Harvard University graduate who majored in government and studied under Henry Kissinger. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a contributing editor and founder of Forbes ASAP.
