Summary :
Today’s financial and economic crisis originated, paradoxically, in the heartland of advanced information and communications technology (ICT): the United States. California, home to both Silicon Valley and Hollywood, was perhaps the hardest-hit U.S. state.1 Late in 2013, San Jose, California—at the center of Silicon Valley—was cutting social services, leaving potholes in disrepair, and planning to strip city workers of health benefits.2 It was not supposed to turn out this way. For decades we were told that ICTs constitute a source of general economic uplift. From the theory of postindustrial society, first advanced during the 1960s, to “new economy” boosters during the 1990s, to their successors today, public discourse has ordained the regenerative benefits of ICTs. A benign future would be borne to us, as we became an information society anchored by networks; the forecast was endlessly bright. Instead, the United States, the historical driver of digital systems and services, led the world into the deepest and most prolonged slump since the 1930s. Commencing in December 2007, a recession turned into a full-scale panic. At the nadir of the financial collapse, in September and October 2008, twelve of the thirteen largest U.S. financial institutions were at risk of collapsing within two weeks. The crisis, however, was global in scale, as central banks from the Bank of England to Brazil and from the European Central Bank to South Korea became desperate for dollar liquidity.3 Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that this period “was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.”The U.S. government intervened on an unprecedented scale, making commitments worth an estimated $23.7 trillion through thirty-five separate programs to backstop the reeling financial system.5 The emergency was arrested, but not before the turmoil carried over to the economy—both domestically and internationally. Output, trade, and investment plunged. As the economy staggered into 2009, the language employed by sober analysts was only somewhat more subdued: a “Great Recession,” a “Second Great Contraction,” even a “Lesser Depression.”

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