I rather disagree with Jonathan Skillings’ cynical take on Gates’ WSJ op-ed and remarks to Bild. Stump speech perhaps but there’s a lot of truth to it. Tech sure can’t save the economy from the normal ebb and flow of the business cycle. We’re going into a recession in the US and who’s to know whether it will be short or long. But if your time horizon is longer than a couple of years, as it should be, the technology boom is almost certainly going to be a key driver of the global economy for decades to come. The Internet revolution is building on top of a revolution in microprocessors which is still going strong. History teaches us that these sorts of fundamental changes in technology take a long time to work themselves through the economy. We are in for a long period of creative destruction with emphasis on the creative.

As for the dot.com bust—that would seem to prove the point wouldn’t it? A lot of businesses that didn’t have a clue how to make money disappeared. While the degree of naivete was perhaps worse than usual, all new industries begin with the mass formation and death of firms with only a few ultimately surviving. We’ve emerged from the dot.com bust into the brave new world of Web 2.0. Huge, global, successful companies have emerged from this. More will come.

So I’m with Gates: we’re in for interesting and prosperous times.