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American Morning

Terrorist Attacks May Re-Ignite Tech Economy

Aired December 28, 2001 - 08:39   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: As we prepare to leave 2001 behind, it's natural to wonder what 2002 may bring.

David Pierce Snyder is a strategic forecaster and lifestyles editor for the futurist magazine. He calls himself a macro-futurist. And he's in our Washington bureau this morning, Good to have you with us, sir.

DAVID PIERCE SNYDER, "THE FUTURIST" MAGAZINE: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: "Macro-futurist," that means big picture. What is the big picture?

SNYDER: The big picture is wonderful. And, in fact, people that are concerned about the 9-11 events, and the fact that, well, they seem to have plunged us further into a recession. The committee says the recession started in March. But, this suggests also, that the expenditures, the investments, the social adaptation to the realities of 9-11 will, in fact, provoke a boom return of the high-tech economy, especially in the coming year.

O'BRIEN: Explain how that happens. That's a great half-full analogy. We're glad that -- we're glad you see it that way. But where do you see the boom coming from?

SNYDER: Basically, the high-tech boom had slowed down because, although the technology was ready for the next generation, Ahah! There wasn't a demand for it. Like, the high-speed broadband internet. Well, what were they going to do for us? Well, video conferencing. They've had this capacity for 10 years, and in spite of the fact that business travel got worse and worse, more and more expensive, more and more terrible experience, people still said, "I'm a road warrior. You've got to meet and deal. You've got to press the flesh." So people traveled. After 9-11, a lot of companies are saying, "Hey, listen, maybe we don't need to put our employees at risk."

So suddenly, boom growth and video conferencing, and, the stock of the companies that provide those services, and the stock of the company that makes that equipment, all gone up 100 percent since 9-11, sales booming. Similiarly, more and more people talking about video training, instead of training courses. More and more people talking about telecommuting. There's a growing number of people that after 9- 11 said, "I don't want to go in to the city anymore." Or, "I don't want to work in a high-rise building."

O'BRIEN: Is all this enough to solve the problems of the recession, though? Video conferencing and telecommuting?

SNYDER: Well not that -- not just that. It is to provoke a mass market demand for the next generation of this new technology. Broadband, in particular, but also, wireless. And, as you see more and more people moving to e-mail, more and more people moving to electronic payments, not necessarily because they are afraid of getting anthrax in the mail but, because they are afraid that the mail system is going to get screwed up, and then my payment's going to be late and I'm going to get a late fee.

So, the high-tech revolution had slowed down, and now, expenditures resulting from 9-11 are going to provoke more of a demand for that high-tech technology. And as the market is built, the price of the service itself, broadband, is going to go down over the next 12 months, 18 months, from 50 or 60 bucks a month, down to 30 or 40 bucks a month. That will provoke more and more people to use it.

Then you've got other sorts of things that are happening as well. We realize after 9-11, that you know, only 10 to 15 percent of all the health care providers in America are on the internet. So, when the Center for Disease Control wanted to send out notices about, "here are the symptoms of anthrax. Be attentive. Let us know if you run into him." Wow, nobody is on the internet! So now we've got people saying, "we've got to have a health care internet -- a public health internet." This is something that will provoke enormous improvements in the quality of health care in America.

So, what we are going to see is, that, this -- expenditures in response to making ourselves more safe. More security devices. Biometrics, retina readers, fingerprint scanners -- all that requires immediate access to central databases. We've also found that Americans are willing to give up some privacy in exchange for security, and that's been one of the things that's hanging up the move toward electronic bill-paying, electronic security, all electronic health care. But if Americans are willing to say, "Hey, I don't care if the government knows what color my underwear is. I want to have safe planes. I want to have a good health care system."

O'BRIEN: All right, let's not go there.

SNYDER: All of this is going to provoke this explosion of investment and jump start...

O'BRIEN: Mr. Snyder, I just want to get in real briefly here, because this is all very interesting. But, aren't we, sort of, one terrorist act away from all this going right back into a tailspin?

SNYDER: Not necessarily. The question is: now, you got to get an expert on terrorism on this, but the question arises. How likely is it are we going to have massive attacks. Some of your experts you've just had on here say, "well, all right, the organization may be blitzed, but they've got maybe 1000, 2000 folks out there who have been trained, therefore, it is not unlikely that we will continue to see various action of certain kinds that the terrorists may take. But, mostly, this will provoke more and more efforts on the part of the government to see to it that, "hey, we can overcome this." It's not like terrorism can plausibly destroy America, or even do anything more than turbulate its economy. A system as big as America rolls on, straight forward and as various things happen to it, it shakes them off. And this economy will shake off the consequences of the 9-11 attacks. Recession was already there, this is just going to accelerate our going in and out of it.

O'BRIEN: All right I appreciate all of your insights. Very -- lots of stuff to think about there. I see in my future a very angry producer, if we continue on in this discussion. David Pierce Snyder is an editor at "The Futurist" Magazine, joining us from Washington this morning. Happy New Year to you, sir.

SNYDER: And the same to you.

O'BRIEN: All right.

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