|
Politech
mailing list archives
FC: George Gilder, utter madman?
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 23:51:54 -0400
[I've been on panels with George Gilder, and he's assuredly not an utter
madman. But I'll still give Charles the Subject: line. --Declan]
***********
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:26:49 +0100
To: declan () well com
From: "Charles Arthur, The Independent" <carthur () independent co uk>
Subject: Re: George Gilder, utter madman?
Hi Declan...
Having written this I'm vaguely recalling that Gilder is some mega-guru -
he pops up in The Nudist On The Late Shift, doesn't he? Clearly out of his
ambit when it comes to climate change and stuff like that.
At 2:29 am -0400 on 24/10/00, you wrote:
> From Friday's _Wall Street Journal_:
>
>Internet in the Balance
>By George Gilder
>
>A few weeks back, Al Gore, mocking his own penchant for hyperbole, bantered
>with David Letterman's "Late Show" audience: "I gave you the Internet - and
>I can take it away." This is no joke. While Republicans waste time with
>captious critiques of the straight-arrow Gore's credibility and character,
>the real threat posed by the Democratic candidate is utterly ignored. Mr.
>Gore's policies would impose an energy, tax and regulatory garrote on the
>Internet.
>
>The Kyoto Treaty alone would be devastating to the Net.
Pardon me? "Would be"? Did the US not sign up to it then?
> At a time when
>global temperatures are significantly lower than they were 1,000 or 3,000
>years ago
Mr Gilder is welcome to go live 1,000 or 3,000 years ago, then, since he
thinks it was all going so swimmingly then. Or simply to live his life
according to the products then available.
What matters about climate change and global warming is rate of change of
temperature. The rate of change is amazing at present, and the clearest
cause is concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which can be
traced back to fossil fuel burning.
>, Mr. Gore would impose an energy clamp on the U.S. economy over
>the next decade. Yet billions of new Web servers and Web devices are
>scheduled to come onto the Net during this period, while billions of
>now-poor Asians will also be drastically increasing their energy usage.
A number of Asian countries, including China, got exceptions from Kyoto.
This guy has done no homework.
>With each Web device draining as much as a megawatt-hour a year, a billion
>always-on Internet computers - together with the factories that build them
>and scores of billions of watt-hungry embedded processors - will account for
>an estimated total of four thousand trillion watt-hours
Whose figures? Small devices mean less power use. And I know that I don't
have to travel so much if I get my broadband video conferencing. Look ma,
no business travelling!
By contrast, one US gallon of gasoline (petrol, in most of the
English-speaking world) contains 8355 watt-hours of energy - that's 8.3
kWh. That'll take you about 30 miles (maybe 15 in a city). To consume 1
MWh, burn up 120 gallons - that's about 3,600 miles at 30mpg, 1,800 miles
of urban driving. (American cars get lousy mileage in my experience.)
So if by using a Web device of some sort I can save driving 3,600 miles in
a year, I'm even. Assuming that the Web device uses 1MWh/yr.
Let's see. The Apple G4 my company provides is rated at 480W. The screen
(soon to become LCD) is CRT and uses 300W max (but goes into low-energy
mode when I'm not here, ie about 70% of the time - 7pm-10am and weekends.)
So that's 780W x 365 x 24 x 0.3 = 2,135,250 Wh or about 2 MWh / yr. For
once he's right. Gee, so now I come out even as long as I don't drive 7,200
miles/yr. More realistically, a salesperson who doesn't have to travel
back to their office to enter figures but can just do it over the line
saves a lot of fuel. And they don't have to leave their computer on like I
do. What Gilder's figures all ignore is the idea that you can save on
travel by using the Web.
>Perhaps most menacing is the threat of Gore regulatory policies and
>attitudes on the advance of wireless technology. Wireless access will fuel
>the next phase of Internet growth. But the environmental and regulatory
>passions central to Mr. Gore's entire career are now driving wireless
>innovation overseas.
Nuts. They were overseas already. Europe has been a leader in a lot of this
stuff, Japan ditto. Notice that it's DoCoMo buying *into* the US, not the
US selling its tech to Japan. Gilder is deluded into thinking the US should
lead every single technology everywhere. Global economy means global
marketplace of ideas means the US isn't always there. Other nations won
some medals at the Olympics too, though NBC may not have let you know this.
> Yet the proudest achievement
>of Mr. Gore's favorite agency, the Federal Communications Commission, is a
>vast new tax on the wireless Internet. ...
Selling bandwidth is one option for getting money out of them. Thoose
socialist madmen (as I'm sure he would see it) the Finns give it away. Take
your pick, Mr Gilder
>Mr. Gilder, author of "Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize
>Your World" (Free Press, 2000), is an investor in Internet and wireless
>stocks.
Tell me which ones, so I can avoid them.
best
Charles
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Independent newspaper on the Web: http://www.independent.co.uk/
It's even better on paper
Live in the US? Get a new worldview: http://www.independenceavenue.com
***********
From: "Heasman,David" <David.Heasman () seacontainers com>
To: "'declan () well com'" <declan () well com>
Subject: RE: Al Gore, Internet enemy? by George Gilder
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:37:12 +0100
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
I've been hearing that the WSJ has tipped away from reporting to espousing
some very odd
views, but until now hadn't had an example rubbed into my nose.
This guy is nuts.
> From Friday's _Wall Street Journal_:
> Internet in the Balance
> By George Gilder
> The Kyoto Treaty alone would be devastating to the Net. At a time
when
> global temperatures are significantly lower than they were 1,000
or 3,000
> years ago, Mr. Gore would impose an energy clamp on the U.S.
economy over
> the next decade. Yet billions of new Web servers and Web devices
are
> scheduled to come onto the Net during this period, while billions
of
> now-poor Asians will also be drastically increasing their energy
usage.
> With each Web device draining as much as a megawatt-hour a year, a
billion
> always-on Internet computers - together with the factories that
build them
> and scores of billions of watt-hungry embedded processors - will
account for
> an estimated total of four thousand trillion watt-hours, or close
to half of
> the world's current electricity use. With the restrictions
negotiated in
> Kyoto, a global broadband Internet cannot happen.
Utter madness. He's assuming that in the future the power usage of
computers will be the same as
now. Whereas replacing disks with non-moving storage will reduce
power need quite a bit, and
chips have been running cooler & cooler for many years. Think of
the power required to run a
small computer, say a HP3000, 20 years ago. Nuts.
> On the tax front
What is it now, one American in every 150 is a millionaire?
Taxation must be really hurting.
***********
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 08:02:58 -0400
From: William Allen Simpson <wsimpson () greendragon com>
Organization: DayDreamer
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: Al Gore, Internet enemy? by George Gilder
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
I don't remember who this Gilder fellow is, but he sure doesn't seem
technically competent. By his rhetoric, this is another nutter that
thinks the Internet is the Web. With ill-informed "investors" like
these, it's no wonder that the stock bubble had no relation to reality.
A megawatt-hour per year would be a pretty large device. My laptop is
only 15 W (about 131,400 watt hours per year should it be on all the
time), and my computers only have 35 W power supplies. He's off by an
order of magnitude or so. Nor do I expect "billions" of web servers to
come online anytime. Most servers don't even have the most power
hungry part: the display.
His "global temperatures" don't match what folks in the atmospheric
sciences present around here.... He's missing a few zeroes on his
years. Technically, it's not even temperatures that are the issue,
yet; it's atmospheric composition and weather patterns.
Income taxes don't affect electronic commerce any more than they
affect any other kind of commerce. Maybe he's opposed to income taxes
as a matter of principle (he prefers property taxes?). The Internet
tax problem has never been federal; it's new, confusing and
discriminatory state and local taxes. I'm sure we all agree that we
don't need "huge special taxes" on the Internet, and I'm unaware of any
"vast new tax" on wireless. There's no such thing as the "wireless
Internet". Bits are bits are bits.
Although much innovation in wireless comes from overseas, I'd expect
that Qualcomm (the founders invented DSS used in CDMA and other things)
would object to the characterization. The slowness in adoption of
"broadband" wireless has been due to roadblocks raised by the old guard
US firms, such as ATT. Overseas, they have less captive
infrastructure, and thus less barriers to change. Meanwhile, the
Internet has been an international project for over 20 years. Heck,
when the USSR cut the phone lines during the coup in '91, the Internet
stayed up!
It's true that Gore wasn't the only Congressional supporter of the
Internet in its early days. I wish that local heroes that helped
fund the NSFnet got more credit, such as former Congressman Bob Carr --
and Senator Carl Levin is a wonder at diverting military dollars into
useful programs.
Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
> [An opposing view to Krugman's piece I sent out Monday (at
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-01443.html). --Declan]
>
> From Friday's _Wall Street Journal_:
>
> Internet in the Balance
> By George Gilder
>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.1
iQCVAwUBOfV6Vdm/qMj6R+sxAQGhsQP/Tb2DTFlyTSwFG5vYkOYtFPs1zmasQO9r
EFELbhfIpifN2oZNl4jY8acZEWIY2iTkY1y68NjIo9DmxWWHyjheTrbygPwkQQEB
9USy/wM+FxPRKcrygSkgiKfEkGPA4zqYRTHgmfQQ73A1xmxmLZdKX7AnRARtTO39
mGLr5kVirj0=
=CHsX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
***********
From: "Jay Holovacs" <holovacs () idt net>
To: <declan () well com>, <politech () politechbot com>
Subject: Re: Al Gore, Internet enemy? by George Gilder
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:32:49 -0400
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200
----- Original Message -----
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
To: <politech () politechbot com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 2:29 AM
Subject: FC: Al Gore, Internet enemy? by George Gilder
What is this scare tactic bullshit??? This sky is falling approach is every
bit as uneducated
> With each Web device draining as much as a megawatt-hour a year
What the hell is a megawatt hour a year???? Obviously mixing units here.
Does he mean a megawatt a year? That's equivalent to a couple of light
bulbs, a tenth of a window airconditioner.
>a billion
> always-on Internet computers
1 always-on computer for 6 people .... not likely. And completely ignoring
improvements in computational efficiency.
When you add in efficiency changes caused by intelligent buildings,
controlled lighting, heating/cooling, the computer consumption is trivial
(and indeed is a tiny fraction of energy used for other purposes). There are
far bigger energy wastes to worry about than CPU usage, and both government
and the power industry are fully aware of this.
>With the restrictions negotiated in
> Kyoto, a global broadband Internet cannot happen.
BULLSHIT. [Besides, if broadband were *actually* so much of a threat as to
totally unbalance the energy equations (it is not) then maybe it certainly
would be correct to question if it were worth the cost.]
jay
***********
From: "Eric C. Grimm" <ericgrimm () mediaone net>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
Subject: RE: Al Gore, Internet enemy? by George Gilder
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:15:43 -0400
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0)
Importance: Normal
Since we both seem to read WSJ's op-ed page from time to time, how about
also reprinting coverage from their front page, that examines the same
subject in a way that is somewhat more transparent that Mr. Gilder's
diatribe?
________________________________________
October 24, 2000
How Gore and Bush Differ
On the Future of Broadband
By BOB DAVIS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- The next president will preside over
the construction of a huge new stretch of the information
superhighway. How would Al Gore and George W.
Bush differ as engineer-in-chief?
For starters, the two candidates have significant
differences on one of the biggest questions facing the
media and technology industries: Should government
require cable companies to give rivals access to their
lines? The question has emerged as a central sticking
point in the regulatory review of the Time
Warner-America Online merger, and it affects untold
billions of dollars in investment and the evolution of the
industry itself.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore also disagree when it comes to
regulating the broadcast, telephone, wireless, cable and
satellite systems that make up the emerging information
highway. But they do so in unexpected ways: Mr. Bush,
the Republican, isn't entirely pro-business, and
Democrat Gore isn't entirely pro-regulation.
Whoever wins will arrive at the White House just as
construction of the next information network swings into
high gear. Communications firms plan to spend $200
billion over the next four years putting together a
high-speed communications network capable of ferrying
libraries of digital information from home to home,
according to Gartner Dataquest, the Stamford, Conn.,
market-research firm. The next president's approach to
so-called broadband communications and the lieutenants
he appoints will greatly affect the level of regulation, the
pace of mergers, the role of cable and telephone
monopolies, and the ability of wireless entrepreneurs to
snag enough radio spectrum to build nationwide
networks.
How critical is Washington's role? The communications
industry has contributed $27 million so far to the two
presidential candidates and their political parties, with
about 60% of the money going to Mr. Gore and the
Democratic National Committee, says the
Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics,
which tracks donations.
Neither candidate has a detailed agenda for broadband
development. But a look at their records and statements
on telecommunications provides a guide for how they
would handle the issues:
[...]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology
You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact.
To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 By Date 
By Thread
Current thread:
- FC: George Gilder, utter madman? Declan McCullagh (Oct 25)
|
Intro
