Each, if taken literally, carries with it the certainty of pressures for enormous change in markets, institutions, government policies, and the way we use networks in our daily lives. There is no disputing Mr. Gilder's insight, research diligence, command of facts, imagination, creativity, and willingness to take a chance on being dead wrong. His predictions, however, have important limits. His analysis also may contain technical flaws, but those would escape my critical review. What is clearer to me is the absence of any consistent effort to factor economic, financial, regulatory, or other institutional constraints into the analysis.
Technology permits space travel and transportation.
Electric cars have been built and tested, and they work. Vaccines are available to prevent afflictions that still kill millions of people each year. D.C. Technology allows lots of things we do not have. The constraints are economic and political. We might explore dozens of such constraints.