Not according to Cass. "In the 1930s, car sales went bust during an adjustment period," he says. "It was part of a broadly based Great Depression that was shared by the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, who themselves suffered under the decline of serious errors in monetary policy. Around 1937, car sales had rebounded strongly. The main distinction with technology today, however, is that photonics, genetics, and nanotech are still in their infancy. For photonics in particular, capacity is lagging far behind demand. The broadband bottleneck is likely to be eliminated over the next two years, leading to the large remaining balance of a quarter century's worth of expansion."

If the dotcom debacle won't bring this expansive wave to an end, what will? "If CFOs can't see a turnaround, they are going to hold off on capital spending," says Cass. "That in itself feeds nervousness among consumers." However, a major environmental disaster, war, or some kind of cataclysmic event could bring our 27-year cycle to an unanticipated halt. Those are the things to worry about.

As a student of waves, Cass is steadfast in his insistence that this period is an interruption -- not a halt: a technology downturn, not a global downturn. "The main effect of the economic downturn is being felt right now," he says. "By looking at consumer-confidence numbers and at the National Association of Purchasing Managers Index, I can get some information about the depths of manufacturing activity. We had a very short, dramatic downturn last year, and that damaged consumer confidence significantly. But we still have record confidence levels. In 1992, a year after the recession, the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index went down to 47.3. We're at 117 right now. We went up to 144.7 in early 2000 -- that was the all-time high. We're still at high levels now. Those numbers will come down further in the next few months before they start to rise again, but the market is bottoming out. To take a longer-term perspective, this is a period of opportunity for business and for investors. If the Fed is aggressive, and if we don't have any major external disruptions, I think we're going to be okay."

Harriet Rubin (hrubin@aol.com) is a Fast Company senior writer and author of The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women (Doubleday, 1997) and Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambition (HarperCollins, 1999).

Sidebar: The Five New Economies

The past 200 years have seen not just one new economy but five -- a series of waves that lapped ashore with the predictability of a scheduled event. According to Roger Cass, the five new economies are as follows.

The first new economy: The first boom began in 1789 in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and lasted 26 years. It was brought to a halt by the post-Napoleonic Wars recession, which then persisted for 33 years. Cass calls this "The Industrial/French Revolution."

The second new economy: The second Long Boom began in 1848. Cass calls it "The Great Railway Era." It lasted 25 years and ended in 1872, when European and U.S. financial companies started to go bust, partly due to the outstanding loans that financed many railroad lines and to the failure of panicked banks. The downturn lasted 24 years.

The third new economy: Cars, the telephone, and electricity were the new technologies that premiered during the third cycle in 1897. Overlapping with the original Belle Époque, this cycle was most like our own new economy. This period had a run of 24 years.

It was the time of the greatest freedom and the most expansive economic boom that the world had ever seen. "The Beautiful Age" was marked by bohemian culture in Paris. "World War I brought things to a halt by 1921," Cass says. The downturn for that cycle lasted 27 years, from 1921 until the end of 1947.

The fourth new economy: It started in 1948, prompted by the first computers, the aftermath of World War II, Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and colonial independence. This new economy ended in 1973, after a run of 26 years, around the time of the OPEC oil crisis and the collapse of Bretton Woods. The downturn lasted for 20 years, from 1974 through 1993.

The fifth new economy: In 1994 came our own new economy, the new Belle Époque, almost exactly 100 years after the original Belle Époque. This period was built on new technologies in communications and in globalization, delivering unprecedented wealth.

"The period that we were in during the 1990s was similar to the one that we were in during the 1890s," Cass says. The most powerful link: The revolution in communications, which opened up the global economy, produced revolutions in the Eastern bloc nations, and spread freedom around the world. Our current new economy, which Cass calls "The Internet Age," will last approximately 27 years, until 2020. The adjustment period that follows will last 25 years.