IP: The year in tech: the highs and lows -- by Dan Gilmor

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/dgillmor/dg123001.htm


The events of Sept. 11 cast a long shadow over 2001, and last week we 
looked at the technology year solely in the context of the attacks and 
their aftermath. Now let's look at the rest -- the highlights and 
lowlights, sometimes intertwined, that kept making the tech world so 
endlessly fascinating and important.
The Justice Department and nine of the states prosecuting the Microsoft 
antitrust case snatched a humiliating defeat from the jaws of victory. 
Having trounced a corporate lawbreaker in court, they sold out competition 
and consumers with a vacuous settlement. Nine states, led by California, 
Iowa and Connecticut, couldn't stomach the deal and stayed the course. But 
the odds now favor Microsoft, which has never wavered in its determination 
to continue brutalizing an industry over which it gained absolute control 
through unethical and illegal practices, and ultimately to control the 
choke points of commerce and communications. Makes you wonder if crime pays.

The technology-stock bubble showed little sign of reinflating as the tech 
economy stayed mostly in the dumps. Silicon Valley's unemployment rate, 
once among the lowest anywhere, jumped above the national average. (Housing 
prices, while modestly down in some parts of the valley, remained absurdly 
out of whack with reality.) But the tech economy's drop brought back
something that had been missing to some degree -- a sense that we may be 
returning to the days when people worked on new ideas for their own sake, 
not just for the sake of getting rich quick.

<snip>

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