DePauw News Archive

Economic adviser George Gilder to speak on "Effects of Technology"

April 9, 1999

What effects will technology have on the workplace as well as the homes and lives of individual citizens in the next century?

George Gilder, world-renowned economic adviser, president of Gilder Technology Group Inc. and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, will look into that future during a convocation at DePauw University on Friday, April 16 at 11 a.m. in the Performing Arts Center, Kresge Auditorium. Titled "Into the Telecosm: The Effects of Technology in the Next Century," his speech is open and free to the public.

Gilder predicts that future businesses will need to focus on one scarce resource: their customers' time. He contends that businesses will succeed to the extent that they use the abundant resources of silicon. Just as all businesses of the industrial era were forced to come to terms with steam and oil, Gilder believes businesses of the information era will have to come to terms with the growing power of the silicon in computer chips and the silica in fiber optics.

As an economic adviser, Gilder pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, program director for the Manhattan Institute and a frequent contributor to A.B. Laffer economic reports.

Author of the acclaimed book Wealth and Poverty, Gilder consulted regularly with key figures in the Reagan and Bush administrations and with leaders of America's high technology businesses. He was President Reagan's most frequently quoted living author, and in 1986 Gilder received a White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence.

A Harvard University graduate, Gilder studied under Henry Kissinger and taught as a fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics. He is the author of 10 books, including Life After Television. He is a contributing editor for Forbes and a frequent contributor to a wide range of publications.

Gilder has been chairman of a small business himself and serves on the boards of directors of Wave Systems, which makes encryption and metering gear, and Berkshire Corporation, which manufactures semiconductor clean room disposables.