Gilder's Law
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Formulated by the technology writer George Gilder in the 1990s, Gilder's Law states that communications bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computing power, so the cost of transmitting data falls faster than the cost of processing it. The claim rests on the enormous capacity potential of optical fiber and wavelength division multiplexing, which allow a single fiber to carry many channels simultaneously. It is grouped with Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law as one of the digital era's central trends. Key qualification: the trend concerns capacity, not latency or last-mile delivery.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Assume cheap transport: design architectures that move data across the network rather than store it locally. - Treat scarcity as temporary: avoid optimizing long-term plans around today's bandwidth prices and limits. - Watch latency: recognize that bandwidth growth does not guarantee low delay or stable connections.
Anchor fast decisions
Optical fiber carries information as light across many separate wavelengths at once, and each generation of equipment can use more wavelengths and higher modulation rates. Because the physical medium is far from exhausted, capacity expands faster than the electronics needed to compute on the data. Unit transmission cost therefore falls quickly, which reshapes which architectures are economically viable.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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- wiki.mbalib.comhttps://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/%E5%90%89%E5%B0%94%E5%BE%B7%E5%AE%9A%E5%BE%8Bverified
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