George Gilder

This was a frustrating book in some ways. On the one hand, there are some excellent ideas and insights in it regarding the role of knowledge in capitalism and market economies in general. On the other hand, the author goes off the rails a couple times (the worst for me was his claim that the second law of thermodynamics is wrong) and apparently couldn't help but air his deplorable social views (for example, his attitude towards women can be summed up as that they should be married and kept safely at home raising the children).

I'd give this four stars if he'd left out the moralizing, cherry-picked science-denialism, and painful romanticizing about entrepreneurs. But, as it stands, it's three at most.… (mais)

I cannot say I recommend this book. People may consider George Gilder to be a great thinker, but he is an awful writer and narrator.

His central thesis is that Google's (and I assume he includes Facebook in this thesis) days of dominance are nearing an end. I am not enough of a "tech guru" to dispute his premise or to accept it. However, I hoped to read a book that was going to take me through the argument in a coherent manner.

His logic is lost in a swirling ocean of anecdotes and jargon.
If his target audience is restricted to people who are experts in this field, then he should not have published the book, intending for a wider audience to read it.

Find a better book. This is my advice.… (mais)

Time, space, matter, energy, knowledge and information.

One of the largest impediments to any good, proper and complete understanding of our universe, of ourselves and of our own position within it, is the current failure to firstly define and understand ‘information’ itself.

Although I’m not prepared to divulge ‘information’s’ correct ontological identity here, I can quite confidently say that it is not ‘digits’ no matter how many of the latter one may have at one’s disposal, nor how cleverly arranged they are, nor how large, powerful, numerous and globally interconnected are any of the machines and devices operating on them.

‘Digits’ are, patently enough, very useful things with which to count and calculate - to add, subtract, multiple and divide. We first used our own anatomical digits - our fingers and toes - for these particular tasks, then we scratched marks on (prison !) walls, next we invented the abacus and although we chew constantly on the idea that our modern day computers and communications devices are ‘real thinking machines’ they are quite demonstrably not, but are, rather, only ‘bean counters’; they are none other than vastly accelerated, massively miniaturised, hugely interconnected, user-friendliarised, electronically-automated ABACUSES.

In ‘Life After Google’ George Gilder makes note of this particular fact - that is, he makes note of the abacusial status of our now many and various computing/communicating machines and devices, concomitantly reminding us that these machines can only count and calculate and otherwise entirely lack the ability to actually ‘think’.

In spite of his recognition of these particular facts, Gilder has not yet figured out exactly what ‘information’ is - as a phenomenon in its own right and not just what any of it says or means - nor has he ascertained the exact nature of any of the directly information-related phenomena such as ‘thought’, ‘mind’, ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’, ‘understanding’, ‘knowledge’, ‘knowing’ and ‘consciousness’.

I can also quite confidently assert that once ‘information’s’ correct identity is recognised and as such factored into our understandings of ourselves and of our universe, it becomes eminently possible to, firstly, identify, define, describe and fully understand all of the directly information-related phenomena such as ‘thought’, ‘mind’, ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’, ‘understanding’, ‘knowledge’, ‘knowing’, ‘sentience’ and ‘consciousness’ (to far less than exhaust the list), and then by building on these particular understandings, it subsequently becomes equally eminently possible to establish the ontological identities of everything else here inside our universe - time, space, matter, energy, entropy, motion, inertia, knowledge and knowing.… (mais)