Atoms Redux

There is an amusing irony in the building of what appears to be a pretty strong consensus behind infrastructure repair as an economic recovery strategy. Back in the ancient history of the Clinton Administration, the Reverend Nicholas Negroponte would preach the ascent of bits over atoms to his flock of Wired subscribers (later rebottling his Kool-Aid in a book). As the bits rose with the inflation of the dot-com bubble, few paid attention to the deterioration of infrastructure atoms. It is nice to see the recovery of a sense of reality where the value of bits can only be assessed in terms of their service to the atoms!