Read it here. After all the talk about the “network effect” and its “accelerating pace of change”, it turns out that US growth in the last decade has been based on cutting costs and cheap credit.  The lesson is that communications technology is not a panacea we thought it was; we need to find interesting new things for it to do, and for that we need a little leadership.

“No industrial revolution in the past has been based on a single technology. A combination of radio, television, flight, antibiotics, synthetic materials, and automobiles drove the productivity surge of the early and mid-20th century. The Industrial Revolution of the second half of the 19th century combined railroads, electricity, and the telegraph and telephone. Similarly, for sustainable economic growth, the U.S. needs breakthrough innovations outside of core IT.”