We were going to be important people. But now, we re just ordinary guys at ordinary companies. All across the country, disillusioned technologists like Bhatia abound. They signed up to create an exciting new world but suddenly, with scarcely any warning, the world fell apart on them. In less than a year, they ve gone from visionaries to technicians.
Dreams are too expensive now.
The waning corporate enthusiasm for speculative ventures is characteristic of all economic down cycles. Some technologists and policymakers fear that if the collapse continues, good ideas will get thrown out with the bad. When investment money disappears, they argue, creativity follows. Given the downturn that we are seeing in capital spending for new information technology, it s quite possible that the pace of innovation is going to slow down, said Daniel Kevles, a science historian at Yale University. It has to be paid for.