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- THE FRIDAY LETTER -
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for friends and subscribers)
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| http://www.gilder.com/
| Issue 268.0/October 20, 2006
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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:
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/article/a_technologists_take_on_google_the_dalles_and_the_future_of_it_all/C426/L426/
________________
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:
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/979211.html
Read George Gilder’s Wired Article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/cloudware.html
|
Year-to-date returns for THE GILDER TECHNOLOGY REPORT’s “Telecosm
Technologies” companies continue to impress |
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:
http://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:
http://www.nyquistcapital.com/2006/10/16/final-thoughts-on-gilder-telecosm-2006/#more-512
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… http://tabletpcthoughts.blogspot.com/2006/10/net-neutrality-from-gilders-telecosm.html
|
The Gildertech Blog, http://blog.gildertech.com/ | Logon now to see what’s new. |
Readings /
Lessig-nificant
http://handsoff.org/net-neutrality/lessig-nificant/
Level 3 Elopes With Broadwing
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc20061017_492085.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives
Future of Computing
http://krasnow.blogspot.com/2006/10/future-of-computing-george-gilder-at.html
George Gilder
on The Information Factory
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=246227#246227
America The
Prosperous
http://blogs.forbes.com/
How to Finance the World’s Poorest Citizens
http://www.forbes.com/home/entrepreneurs/2006/10/19/microfinance-NGO-India-ent-fin-cx_kw_1019wharton.html
Paging Dr. Robot
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71978-0.html?tw=wn_index_4
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