day 69

pearl harbor, circa 2001

America invented the PC, software, programming, and the Internet. Americans were the first to jump on non-American inventions such as the WWW. But is the "American Lead" forever? Is Silicon Valley headed for a Pearl Harbor? About every decade a new threat comes along - the Great Space Race in the 1960s following the Sputnik scare, the Great Gasoline Line in the 1970s when the Middle East flexed its muscles over oil, the Japan, Inc. threat in the 1980s when consumers bought cars from Japan as if Detroit had gone the way of Atlantis, and now the threat of global terrorism. The World Wide Web has become an open invitation for someone smarter, faster, harder working, and with more resources, to take over the dominant role of leadership in the coming software economy. The idea is this: whomever rules computing on the Internet, also rules the world. After all, the whole world will run on the WWW. Tomorrow we look at this challenge and eaves-drop on an electronic conversation among some experts of Wired World. Think world domination through "internet appliances", and you will get my drift.

Daily Dose Index