“Are you a technoptimist or a depressimist?” asks Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a member of the Belfer Center’s Board of Directors. “This is the question I have been pondering after a weekend hanging with some of the superstars of Silicon Valley. I had never previously appreciated the immense gap that now exists between technological optimism, on the one hand, and economic pessimism, on the other. Silicon Valley sees a bright and beautiful future ahead. Wall Street and Washington see only storm clouds.”