In Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World, George Gilder lays out an egotistical, infuriating, insightful, entertaining view of the future of the networked world that he believes is no less consequential than the most important breakthroughs in physics. Let’s call Telecosm Gilder’s Grandiloquent Unified Field Theory.

It long has been Gilder’s belief that bandwidth—in essence, communications firepower—is exploding and that its abundance is becoming the most important technological, social, and economic element of our time. As he says in his new book, the profusion of bandwidth is creating a "telecosm" that will make "human communication universal, instantaneous, unlimited in capacity." He says the telecosm will "define the direction of technological advance, the vectors of growth, the sweet spots for finance." He sees the telecosm as the natural extension of the developments he described in his 1989 book Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology—the microcosm being the world created by the explosion of computing power.

The real benefit of Telecosm is that Gilder—operating in what he calls "the prophetic mode of the inspired historian"—takes his general belief and develops it into 20 “laws of the telecosm” that provide provocative rules to live by. Among them:

The Law of the Telecosm is Gilder’s version of Metcalfe’s law, which says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users. Gilder says the principle applies to bandwidth and argues that, with communications capacity exploding, the value—and use—of networks will grow exponentially. He says an Internet-based company is currently seeing just "one-tenth of 1% of its potential volume half a decade hence."

The Law of Telecosmic Price says that a one-unit decline in the price of bandwidth yields a five-unit increase in demand.

The Law of Wasted Bandwidth urges companies to use bandwidth "recklessly," to find ways to exploit its abundance and its declining cost.

Some of his reasoning is tenuous, and some of his conclusions are obvious. For instance, the Law of Instantaneous Information builds on the fact that the speed of light is immutable and that our life spans are limited. Combining those facts, Gilder somehow arrives at the simple idea that companies should strive to save time for their customers.

When he uses his laws to analyze opportunities for investing in stocks, he also arrives at some common conclusions. He, like many analysts, favors companies that make fast optical switches and small, long-lasting batteries that can power communications devices. Gilder does go further than most in picking champions. For instance, he says that JDS Uniphase will achieve the same dominance of the telecosm that Intel currently enjoys. He says JDS Uniphase will take its fiber-optic transmission technology "from the summits of the continental trunks" into the "ramifying realms of smaller networks."

Yes, he really writes like that. And like this: "Beyond the copper cages of existing communications, the telecosm dissolves the topography of old limits and brings technology into a boundless, elastic new universe, fashioned from incandescent oceans of bits on the electromagnetic spectrum."

The flow of the book can be as difficult as the prose. He has really written four books in one: an investment guide, a look at the world that infinite bandwidth is creating, a history of scientific discovery, and a textbook with a long glossary. For most people, it will be best to start in the textbook section at the back of the book, where Gilder lays out his 20 laws; understanding his assumptions will make the rest of the book easier to follow.

Gilder does provide a useful reader’s guide to this epic work, which he has been writing, and publishing pieces of, for the past eight years. Some sections can be fun to read. He is particularly good in the section on the development of science, where he tells gossipy tales that show how entrepreneurs developed the technologies that are forming the telecosm.

Still, expect to have to work at this book, to find some of it confusing, and to disagree with much of it. Even Gilder can’t possibly believe all the things he writes.

But read it, anyway. Telecosm’s breadth, detail, insight, and entertainment quotient make it an important book.

Shah, a senior principal with Diamond Technology Partners, still lives on the outer edges of the telecosm. He can be reached at shahp@diamtech.com.