Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

George Gilder: When Bandwidth is Free: The Dark Fiber Interview

My thesis is that bandwidth is going to be virtually free in the next era in the same way that transistors are in this era. It doesn’t mean there won’t be expensive technologies associated with the exploitation of bandwidth … but it does mean that people will have to use this bandwidth, they’ll have to waste bandwidth rather than economize on bandwidth. The wasters of bandwidth will win rather than the people who are developing exquisite new compression tools and all these other devices designed to exploit some limited bandwidth.

George Gilder: When Bandwidth is Free: The Dark Fiber Interview

Fiber optics is going to render bandwidth and hertz virtually free. This world is quite different from the world that assumes bandwidth scarcity. A dearth of spectrum has to be regulated and parceled out carefully by sensitive federal bureaucrats beset by tens of thousands of lawyers. That whole apparatus, both the technology of it – the huge switching fabric of the phone companies – and the legislative apparatus and all its bureaucracies and legal accessories, are going to be rendered almost worthless over the next 10 years.

Hype List: Wireless Everything

Electronics vendors without a cause continue to latch onto the idea of converting everything in sight to wireless, despite … two obstacles. First, venture capitalists are showing a lack of interest, and second, it looks like it’s going to be a long time before the radio-waves-cause-cancer issue is resolved.

Debunking Bandwidth

Why are we worrying about billions of bits per second into the home when we haven’t used 1.5 to 6 million bits per second creatively? Yes, I will need those billions when I watch holographic television or expect a can of spinach to be teleported into my home. But in the meantime? Dear telephone companies, now that your argument prevailed, please take advantage of your installed base of copper twisted pair, which can provide so much more than you are telling people – including video on demand.

Debunking Bandwidth

Fiber will come into being automatically through the forces of common sense and Mother Nature.

Debunking Bandwidth

More bits per second is not an intrinsic good. In fact, more bandwidth can have the deleterious effect of swamping people and of allowing machines at the periphery to be dumb.

Copywrong

Eventually, home copying may become so widespread that estimating its extent from sales figures may be unsatisfactory. This method is already unsatisfactory for musicians who distribute without the help of record companies; if any musicians need additional support, these are the ones. We may need another way to estimate usage of any given piece in order to distribute the tax funds.

Copywrong

We could do without record companies entirely. Record companies … distribute pre-recorded copies of music … But listeners making copies for themselves or their friends do not consume this service; they use only the work of the musicians and composers … We can promote music more effectively by making any one musician’s share of the tax revenues taper off as copies increase. For example, we could calculate an “adjusted number of copies” beyond which revenue increases more slowly than the actual number, following a prescribed mathematical function. The effect of tapering off will be to spread the money more widely, supporting more musicians at an adequate standard of living. This encourages diversity, as copyright was supposed to do.

Copywrong

Here is a proposal for a different system for taxing digital copying – one designed to support music rather than cater to vested interests: Make no restrictions on the functioning of digital copying equipment. Use a survey system to measure the extent of copying of each musical piece. Collect funds with a tax on machines and media, as the current law does. Distribute these funds entirely to the people who create music. Adjust each contributor’s share so that it increases more slowly per copy as it gets larger.