The second half of 2000 marked a turning point in recent economic experience and gave new urgency to questions about the nature and durability of the new economy. Answers to these questions should be clearer on the far side of the slowdown. For analysts standing in the hollow of the process, however, the challenge is still to assess developments in IT-producing and -using industries since mid-2000 and to determine what that experience suggests about the furture.
Digital Economy 2002 cloncludes that, despite an economic slowdown and recession, U.S. industries have continued to build the nation's IT capital stock, to marshal the human skills and IT services that make the installed base of IT capital more productive, and to create as a result the enduring foundation of a stronger economy.