Our leaders' and nation's reaction has made me proud to be an American. This may be humanity's finest hour. The way our people came together and the way our leaders have focused this attack on America towards a higher purpose for the benefit of all mankind - ridding the world of terrorism - is surely of historical significance.

The world is now forever changed, and we must learn to cope because this "twilight war" is likely to last for years or decades. Where is the technology business opportunity in all this, and what can techno-geeks like us do to help President Bush and America?

Here is one touchstone: The economy (America's and the world's) was already in trouble before September 11; the terrorist attacks only exacerbated this situation. There will be no economic recovery without a recovery of the technology sector [1]. That simplifies things a bit. At least we know what questions to ask and what information to dismiss.

My last columns - written long before September 2001 - were pessimistic about the future of innovation in the first decade of the new millennium. Basically, the script had been written, and that script was "The Empire Strikes Back." The insurgents had been crushed. Business had a hard, ugly edge to it. Not since the Spanish Inquisition had the existing power base, the incumbents, so ruthlessly suppressed the upstarts.

The courts will argue for years over what happened [2]. Who was to blame for the tech wreck? Did AT&T, who owned 23% of the common stock and 74% of the voting shares, conspire and sabotage ExciteAtHome so they could pick up the assets for a pittance? AT&T offered $307 million for the assets of a firm not long ago valued at over $18 billion [3].

What is clear is that those providing digital infrastructure were blocked from access to local phone loops. What's also clear is that in too many cases companies' books obscured liabilities. Enron's swan dive from the most valuable corporation in American to bankruptcy was unprecedented [4]. Suffice it to say that some people may go to jail and the lawyers are likely to do better than the stockholders, many of whom lost everything. The dot-coms died in disgrace. Too many of them mistook youth and eagerness for experience and sound business models. Most of the Internet infrastructure firms were on the ropes. The main hope for widely deployed broadband access to the Internet was the DSL providers and they were all facing bankruptcy. Who could sell new products when customers could buy the exact same gear at bankruptcy sales for a few pennies on the dollar? Today, of the big-three providers of DSL, only Covad survives. Its stock is under $1 per share and it is trying to work its way out of bankruptcy. (Warning: I'm an optimist who thinks that DSL service is going to be needed, so I've acquired shares of Covad.)

There are some signs that the Internet firms are starting to dig out of the hole. The giant, Cisco, was down below $12 per share, but is now recovering nicely. I bought some of that too. But forget market valuations. More interesting is that the latest Internet data traffic numbers are in. The Internet traffic for 2001 is quadruple what it was in 2000. That's astonishing. Few users (about 5%) have high bandwidth connections, Internet privacy and security is poor, and 2001 was a terrible year. Still, traffic was up 400%. Think what might happen in a good year. Think what would happen if we worked to encourage innovation. I believe it's a whole new ball game and I'm optimistic.