Geeks Rule!
I don't think anyone has a real good idea of exactly how much low-cost, powerful computers have done for this country's economy in the past couple of decades. I appreciate the hell out of it. I wish everybody did.
Probably impossible to accurately measure, but anecdotal experience, common sense, and studies of productivity that nibble at the edges all say that we owe everything to the last century of technological development (stipulated the two-edged nature of that truth). I think even the non-Geekish could be persuaded of the propostion that technology is a force-multiplier, in business terms a productivity and profit multiplier.
I take the view that the DotCom Boom-n-Bust validates the primacy of technology. With a long history of association with the Valley, I know that it's evolved for itself, naturally, a powerful system for generating ideas and turning them into wealth--in that specific order. By the mid-90s it was humming like a finely-tuned machine. But about then the early hype about the limitless opportunities for wealth on this new Internet thingie brought a swarm of carpetbaggers, business professionals who didn't have the Valley culture in their blood and a visceral understanding of how it worked. They arrived and to their eyes the place was an undisciplined ragtag mob of clueless nerds floundering about indulging themselves playing with their shiny toys, with no formal education in the finer points of business; a bunch of kids long overdue for adult supervision. So they set about to normalize the place along textbook business lines, to finally put the Valley on a business-like footing.
It's been my observation that many professional "money people"--in direct proportion to their success--develop tunnel vision and start to believe that they themselves are actually creating wealth as they move their investment pieces around the board. It becomes an abstract process, insert X $million into the machine here, expect N * X $million out. Businesses are blackboxes with quantifiable parameters and opaque interiors. Gain a "first mover" advantage to block some square on the board, even if you don't really have an idea about what product you're going to set down there. The important thing is how you play the game.
It fell apart, of course, a hollow shell, a house of cards, all sizzle and no steak, all hat and no cattle...pick your metaphor for lack of substance. Technology's the fundamental substance, and people forget that at their peril.