Technorecovery?

Our next move is to take the PS2 into an online environment. It's a natural evolution for interactive entertainment. There may be other consoles that are technologically better than the PlayStation, but they don't deliver anything compelling in terms of entertainment. That lesson can be applied to technology as a whole. When we had technologically impressive PDAs, they were too difficult to use. As a result, people weren't enamored of them. Older technology with an elegant, user-friendly approach was better. As we work on taking PS2 online, we'll keep that in mind. We will focus on enhancing entertainment value: How do we change a player's video-game experience?

Kazuo Hirai is an 18-year veteran of Sony. He became president and chief operating officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America in 1999 and has overseen the development of North American PlayStation operations since 1996.

Bill O'Shea

Chief technology officer and executive vice president
of corporate strategy and marketing, Lucent Technologies;
President, Bell Labs
Murray Hill, New Jersey

It's inevitable that we'll see a tech recovery and a telecom recovery. These sectors make up the fabric of how the world works and plays. They're embedded in people's daily lives. But as the broader tech sector recovers, the telecom industry won't be the leading indicator. Instead, you will see general economic improvement that will allow service providers to begin growing revenues. Only then will equipment providers begin to build out networks again.

One thing is certain: We won't make the same mistakes twice. Now we're looking to the development of new products at Bell Labs that are exciting not only for the short term, but that are also capable of real, long-term revolution in the industry. We're excited to announce things like a single-molecule transistor, a product that uses multi-antennae to boost wireless connections, and software that enables the convergence of data, voice, and video networks onto a single infrastructure backbone.

Most important, these new data, wireless, and optical products have a remarkable level of intelligence. They can survey the network and discover what other elements are available, and then they can configure themselves. These are tasks that used to take 100 or more people to solve and configure by hand. Intelligence in networking is absolutely the next wave of technology.

Bill O'Shea is Lucent's chief technology officer and executive vice president of corporate strategy and marketing. O'Shea also serves as president of Bell Labs, where he has worked since 1972.

Hector de J. Ruiz

Chief executive officer, Advanced Micro Devices
Sunnyvale, California

Over the past few years, we've talked about technology as if it were a stand-alone product -- something that either does or doesn't "sell well." But it is really an enabler for an awful lot of the great products that have made life better for all of us, including cars, computers, PDAs, and phones. Because technology enables these things, any broad recovery will be felt immediately in the technology arena. Tech is the sweetener in the lemonade, you might say. That said, I don't see any significant signs of a recovery in the next quarter or two.

When recovery does come, communications will be the technology category to watch. There is no question that the need and the demand for connectivity is there, and the communications revolution is just beginning. Whether you are in the office, at home, or in the car, you want to connect intelligently to the relevant things in your life. There are 6 billion people in the world, and only a small percentage are broadband connected right now. That's a tremendous opportunity.

This slowdown has given companies the opportunity to innovate. We already know that technology is capable of doing things beyond anything we ever imagined. But let me underline this: The engine of real economic growth is not technology but innovation. And only the companies who are customer-centric in their innovation will succeed.

Hector de J. Ruiz was named CEO of Advanced Micro Devices in April 2002, succeeding the company's founding CEO, W.J. Sanders III. Previously, he was AMD's president and COO. Ruiz came to AMD from Motorola, where he spent 22 years as an engineer and executive in various positions both in the United States and overseas.