It simply replaces one form of communication with another, he says. Tech cheerleaders, including the Federal Reserve, say that technology should keep boosting labor productivity in the coming years. But economist and longtime New Economy critic Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley disagrees. He notes that computers, cellphones and the Net don't raise productivity but only make workers easier to reach 24 hours a day. Not the end of the world Technology boosters say the current slowdown is merely a blip.
Many firms fight off death by morphing into new creatures.
Dell, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Texas Instruments and others are storming into potentially huge markets abroad such as China and India. They're also churning out new products and services, such as wireless chips, optical-networking gear and consulting units. Plus, every few years, a new technology emerges to set off another revolution. Transistors and integrated circuits were born in the 1950s and 1960s. Mainframe computers, PCs and chips changed the world in the 1970s and 1980s.