July 27th, 2006
AlwaysOn: Life after the telephone
Speaking at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit, George Gilder summed up what he termed "life after the telephone":
The essense of what’s happening is that software is hardening in the center of the network and hardware is softening on the edge of the network. Hard-wired television and telephony is giving way to the teleputer.
He speculated that Google could be the biggest telecom company in five years (he’s currently writing an article for Wired about Google’s data centers). "Perhaps it will, in which case life after the telephone is some Google empire, but there are a number of other possiblities."
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
