George Gilder on the new boom based on the Internet economy (2008)

From the pits of the crash of 2000, when the Internet and the dot.com siege were famously dismissed as a barren "bubble," came Google and MySpace to rise up and take all the chips and establish a new Internet economy.  If creativity was not expected, governments could plan it and socialism would work.  But creativity is intrinsically surprising and the source of all real profit and growth.

Because the U.S. remains the world's largest economy and still leads the world in business and technological creativity, the current crisis is mostly confined to boondoggles in finance.  It will pass rapidly and evolve into a new boom.  Emerging is a parallel unregulated financial system based on entrepreneurial creativity and invention.

At the heart of this multitrillion-dollar engine of growth are 741 venture capital firms that traffic in creativity as a business.  These firms command $257 billion under management and have launched companies generating $2 trillion in revenues.

~ George Gilder, "The Coming Creativity Boom," Forbes, November 10, 2008