1. George Gilder observed more than five years ago, "In a world of dumb terminals and telephones, networks had to be smart.

2. Futurist George Gilder describes world where the economy is based on sand, glass and air.

3. He took his time walking home from Gilder Middle School, weaving past cracks in the sidewalk and mud puddles left behind by the spring thaw.

4. Around 1834 his father took up business as a gilder and ormolu manufacturer in London.

5. Amazingly pilot Mike Newman, 35, crawled out of the wreckage of the high performance Swift S-1 gilder after the cockpit broke up on impact.

6. DAVID W. BLIGHT is the director of Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and a professor of American history.