Technology expert sees into future
Information technology expert George Gilder said portable digital phones and Java will be omnipresent in the future in an interview with The Dartmouth yesterday. Gilder said the most common personal computer in the future is likely to be a digital cellular phone. "It will be as mobile as a watch, as personal as a wallet, and will recognize speech, navigate streets, collect your paycheck and read your e-mail," he said. He predicted the cellular phone would also have the capability to connect to large displays in airports and cars so that consumers would not have to read from a postage-stamp size display on the "smart phone" itself. He also said that the phones would not run any Microsoft operating system such as Windows 95, but would have the capability of running programs written in Java -- a computer language which allows programs to be run under any operating system. What advice did Gilder have for students who are interested in the rapidly developing digital communications technology industry? "Learn Java," he said. Gilder said he thought the Moore's Law -- the concept that microprocessor technology doubles every 18 months -- would not only continue into the next century, but would accelerate. He added global digital communications power would soon triple every year, an idea he called "Gilder's Law"