Is Bigger Better?

The rule continues with the telecosm of fiber optics, which moves power outside of companies to customers. The new telecosm will endow one person on an Internet workstation with the communications power of a broadcast tycoon of the television era. In their copper cages, built at a cost of more than a trillion dollars, the leviathan telcos of the world helplessly contemplate the ascendancy of a Qwest or a Qualcomm.

The ultimate goal of microcosm and telecosm is to do more with less, until we can do everything with nothing.

George Gilder (gg@gilder.com) is a respected thinker on technology and public policy. Gilder pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable. He is now working on a new book, Telecosm (expected in 1999) about the future of telecommunications.