Global wireless Internet services. These are giant industrial shifts, which take time to mature, and require progress in core technologies. Fortunately, researchers can collaborate on the Net to speed the pace of development. Software companies, for example, are reinventing themselves as so-called application service providers, leasing their programs over the Net, and thus reducing delays, technical glitches, and costs for the customer. In Japan, which is ground zero for the wireless Internet, a whole new business category known as mobile e-commerce has been built around cell phones that surf the Net.
Economic disasters are fascinating.
Some of the most fabled stories in economics are financial bubbles that ended in economic hardship, from America's railroad-building boom in the late 1860s and early 1870s to the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. But this bull market hasn't been a bubble. It has been a reflection of the New Economy. Right now, investors are reasonably knocking down stock prices, struggling to divine whether the economy will glide gracefully into a more moderate growth pattern, or, thanks to higher oil prices, endure a harder landing. Curl up with The Perfect Storm if you want a good read, but don't bet your portfolio that its economic equivalent will happen.