Now venture three years back, to just after the turn of the millenium, at the time of the IPO of Google. Let's look at this $100 billion goliath under a microscope, and ask how many companies are involved in the same way. There's advertisers of course, of all sorts, and components suppliers, but the latter are mostly single-sourced for cost efficiency. There are human resources staff, and engineers, and web designers, too. The point is, add the total together, and it's pretty quantifiable.

What I have been describing above is commonly referred to as a "supply chain"; it's the chain of supplies responsible for the manufacturing or production process of a company (or a company's product/service). This is where the parallels between emerging economies and emerging technologies diverge, and it tells us something significant about the future of both. The reason the dot-com bubble crashed is arguably the reason technology is vulnerable where emerging economies are now not — that is, there is a distinct shallowness in the supply chains of the former.

My suggestion is that in order for new technology giants like Google, Linux, and AOL to become invaluable to economic growth, work has to be done on deepening the supply chain. The problem technology faces is that there is very little procurement from outside industries involved in the construction of the industry, and this leaves it open and vulnerable. Value can only be created at the rawest level of base materials, after all — service is an extension of value but in itself is easily copied and stolen.

The future of technology may depend on where technology titans can place their services, and how interdependent they can get them to be.