The second year of the new millennium is closing with a track record arguably worse than the first, albeit without a tragedy of the scale of Sept. 11, 2001. The period between Christmas and New Year's tends to bring out existential self-perusal in many people, and those in the communication engineering profession suffer it in spades this year.

Is there a communications industry left to serve? Is there any integrity left in corporate management? Does innovation still retain any value for society? And where are our national goals taking us?

While the first question bears asking, remember that indigestion after a glut the size of the one in 1998-99 always takes quite a while to work out. Remember, too, that wireless access remains a boom industry, that cable modem deployment has hit the 10 million mark in the United States and that the Internet has firmly established itself as the next leap forward in societal communications. With backlogs increasing at chip and system level, we're probably past the bottom of the trough.

And what of corporate honesty? It's best to remember that poster children like Ebbers, Winnick and Kozlowski represent only a fraction of top management in this industry. At the same time, everyone needs to do some soul-searching about individual actions driving speculative frenzy. Day-trading of stock, multiplied by a thousand, arguably can cause as much damage as a single CEO throwing wild parties. If you are griping about your 401k, ask yourself if you helped in the runup.

Those who say innovation is not rewarded should remember that revolutions gain the biggest headlines, but evolution brings us to practical systems. The world doesn't need another style of MAC chip, or a new network topology. But there is plenty of quiet glory in developing the smaller innovations that make all those lofty concepts of the late 1990s work. Remember, though, that these ideas might be developed in an aftermarket company or a small franchised service provider, so you shouldn't wait until Cisco or Nortel start hiring again.

Finally, our national goals remain sound so long as people practice the democratic questioning of goals on a daily basis. My own belief is that the more we seek to pre-emptively root out evil by cleansing corners of the world, the more we risk losing our democracy. But the important thing is that we discuss these issues. When questions themselves become suspect, we trade our democracy for a kingdom, and we know the problems we've faced in the past from kings named George.

http://www.eet.com