Can Technology Save the Economy?

Business

Can Technology Save the Economy?

May/June 2009
By David Rotman

(Page 3 of 7)

The jobs jolt: According to the administration’s economic analysis, the stimulus bill will result in more than three million jobs over the next two years. Last year, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predicted that a $30 billion investment in digital infrastructure would mean nearly a million jobs. Its analysis assumed that the money would be paid out over a year (for the smart grid, the estimated spending was $50 billion over five years), but a report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that much of the technology spending will not reach the economy until 2012 or later.
Credit: Tommy McCall

This is the first of two articles by David Rotman on technology and the federal stimulus package. The second, "Chasing the Sun," appeared in the July/August 2009 issue and examined the impact of spending billions of dollars on renewable energy will have on the future of solar power.

By any measure, $100 billion is a staggering amount of money. That's how much the federal stimulus bill devotes to the discovery, development, and implementation of various technologies. Some $20 billion will fund the increased use of electronic medical records; another $7.2 billion will support the extension of broadband Internet access to areas currently without such services. Most impressive, roughly $60 billion will be spent on energy, funding everything from energy-efficiency programs to loan guarantees for the construction of large facilities that use new biofuel and solar technologies.

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