Fight Back

In this period of great uncertainty, Fast Company recommits itself to the ideas and values that this enterprise has stood for over the past five years. Freedom to pursue our dreams and launch innovative products and services. Joy in our work and in our colleagues. And an optimism that the confluence of new technologies, new ways of working, and new approaches to power and leadership will move the world in a positive direction.

In the days, weeks, and months following September 11, we sought to highlight the freedom, joy, and optimism alive in the physical and emotional rubble of the twin towers and the Pentagon. This index of Web-exclusive features contains some of our best stories on the business community's responses, our readers' recovery, and various experts' reflections following the terrorist attacks on the United States.

Read this collection of stories, and add your voice to Sound Off below.

Business Fights Back

Building Space

Who can blame people for feeling uneasy now in the workplace? One design visionary says this is the time to rethink the American office -- and to design in a new look, feel, and sense of compassion. Anni Layne Rodgers

Fear: A Next Growth Business?

At the conference of the American Society of Industrial Security, companies showed off mission-critical technologies and wrestled with the challenges of hypergrowth. A dispatch from the anxiety economy. Scott Kirsner

Hard Times in Little Kabul

Afghan businesses in the Fremont, California area are suffering fallout from the terrorist attacks. But patriotic Afghan-Americans are hopeful that customers will return before it's too late. Fara Warner

Miracle Workers

Amid the rubble of lower Manhattan, companies are working miracles to get their operations back to work. Firsthand reports from the New York Board of Trade, a Verizon switching center at 140 West Street, and other places under (re)construction. Keith H. Hammonds

Open for Business

How do the owners and employees of a small restaurant in Brooklyn respond to a world-changing tragedy just a few miles away? Not by fleeing or closing, but by staying open for business and serving the needs of the neighborhood. Ron Lieber

Raise the Roof

SpectraSite is a small company with big real-estate holdings in the New York area: 1,200 rooftops. After September 11, SpectraSite did its part by searching for more rooftops to house antennas that may ease the city's communications logjam. Charles Fishman

Sharper Image

The FBI is turning to a small Boston software firm for help in transforming surveillance video into high-resolution images -- and then using the pictures to help track terrorists. Call it the ultimate killer app. Linda Tischler

Tools of the Trade Center

Learn how handheld computers and GPS systems are helping fire chief Joseph Pfeifer run a streamlined evidence-tracking operation on the world's largest crime scene: ground zero. Fara Warner

Community in Crisis

Add Your Voice

In the days and weeks following September 11, Fast Company readers from as far away as Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore expressed their revulsion and offered their support. Read their thoughts, and then add your own reflections and suggestions. Fast Company

Emergency.gov

When Bill Shunn decided to play Good Samaritan on September 11, he raised a crucial question: How can the United States use the Web more effectively to respond to calamities? Daniel H. Pink

Friends in Deed

The Fast Company readers' network is working to implement long-term disaster-relief efforts that get to the real heart of community. Learn how 40,000 grassroots leaders are making a difference in New York and beyond. Anni Layne Rodgers