The high tech sandwich is missing the meat.

Over the last thirty years, the United States has built, in the form of the electronics business, the most dynamic, innovative and -- the petroleum industry aside -- most valuable industry in history. These strengths have in turn enabled the U.S. to create millions of jobs to absorb a growing population, kept the country competitive against new challenges in the global marketplace, and through new inventions improved the health, the quality of life, and the prosperity of its citizens.

It is an amazing achievement, and centuries from now people will look back in wonder at how we ever did it . . .and, unfortunately, with equal amazement, that we let it slip away.

And it is all now slipping away.
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The high technology revolution that has transformed modern America (and the world) has been driven by three factors. Innovations in applied science -- the bottom slice of bread; large companies -- the top slice; and -- the meat in the middle -- new company creation.

Right now . . .and as far as I can see in the future . . . it is that middle that is missing. All of the prosperity I see returning to Silicon Valley is, in fact, something of an illusion. ... The crucial center of the tech world ? new and fast-moving companies -- the meat in the technology sandwich -- is gone. Under the press of an economic slowdown, government regulations that have handcuffed entrepreneurs and venture capitalists -- and perhaps most of all, an Administration that increasingly seems actively hostile to entrepreneurship and small business -- high tech is hollowing out.
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Over the last couple months, I've seen some spectacular new start-up companies, some with finished products on the market. All of them are starving from lack of capital -- and their business plans, which would have attracted tens of millions of dollars two years ago, earning only shrugs and apologies from straitened venture capitalists and banks. My guess is that several hundred new start-ups in Silicon Valley have already been lost, with no sign anywhere on the horizon.

If, as has been the case in the past, Silicon Valley and the tech industry are the leading indicators of the country?s economic health, this is going to be a truly 'jobless recovery', one that rewards the few at the expense of the many in ways we haven't seen for decades, that consolidates power in Big Business at the expense of the little people, and which delays the adoption of important, life-saving, new inventions for years.

So much for 'Fair'.

Sometime soon, a hungry Washington is going to look to high tech as it last hope in restoring prosperity and employment to millions of Americans. It will see an enticing sandwich of opportunity . . .but when it bites down it will find only air.