A society too rich for its own good, its hard-won prosperity behind it, now indolent and wasteful, sits prey to a range of rivals arrayed along its soft underbelly.

Go down the list. The mighty-like Ford in the '70s-have stumbled.

Intel has peaked.

The PC is passe.

Lucent has gone dark.

The mythology of Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial swashbucklers was laid to rest along with the esteemed William Hewlett-the "H" of HP, a company that became so high on itself it needed a new name. The culture created by Hewlett and Dave Packard has shifted from creating great technology-and a good place to work-to one of unbridled greed and indifference to innovation.

California, which Craig Barrett has called "a third-world country," is the state most economists now believe will jiggle the brass-plated handle that will flush a decade of prosperity down the drain. The exodus from California doesn't lead to Phoenix and Austin-the job flow and adversity here will create a new technology map of Asia and the Pacific Rim.

Case studies of Detroit's demise found that while Motor City executives couldn't build gas guzzlers big enough or fast enough, the American public had fallen in love with Volkswagens and sportier, more economical Nissans and Toyotas.

Anthropologists point to Detroit's insular executive culture, where industry leaders went to the same churches, played at the same country clubs and dined at the same restaurants. The world was about to come crashing down on the American working man, but the band played on.

Today's high-tech corporate arrogance is akin to that which sank Detroit.

Lucent Technologies is billions of dollars in the hole and about to lay off 10,000 engineers and other high-tech workers. Doubtless Lucent made ill-timed bets on high-tech optical switches and the direction of broadband technology. But its $40 million outlay to create the world's most exclusive 36-hole, 5,000-acre golf course in New Jersey's fox-hunt country is the height of Chrysleresque conceit. Complete with helicopter pad and 20,000-square-foot travertine-marble guest house, the fairway was the brainchild of ousted former chairman Richard McGinn-a high-tech executive worthy of his own shrine-of-shame along with Detroit whiz kids Robert McNamara and J. Edward Lundy. With management like this, is it any wonder the industry is crumbling?

On the eve of World War I Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary who committed the Empire to battle, is said to have looked out his window and said: "The lights are going out all over Europe. I do not think we shall see them lit again in our lifetime."

We stand in a similar twilight of affluence about to confront no less an historic adversity. The lights are dimming, the reckoning has begun.

Richard Wallace is the former Editor-In-Chief of EE Times, a 25-year industry watcher and currently director of the EDTN Network.