Speedfreaks and Wall Street

I am a technophile. Most people of generation X and beyond are. There have even been studies showing how teenagers become uneasy when you take away their cell phones. I don't think that I am so entrenched in technology that I am uncomfortable without it, I am just exited about all of the advances that we have seen because it. It is frequently argued that the internet is to our generation what the printing press was to the 15th century. because both have made the world so much smaller. Communication is definitely much easier now, things visible instantly all over the world, but the effects of this are not analyzed nearly enough. One of the most obvious and apparent in our current national landscape is that of the stock market. We used to have to look in the paper to find out how out investments were doing. It was not a daily, or even hourly, activity, but a slow building process that was meant for long term growth. With the advent of the internet, day traders and do-it-yourselfers make up a large block of investors. This is especially true in tech savvy circles. If you have the $25,000 minimum to trade online, why pay a broker if you can do it yourself cheaper. We had warning signs back in the crash of 2000, but most of this was chalked up to the corruption of the Enrons and WorldComs. The ease of transaction is still there, and this is a very dangerous thing in the hands of a knee-jerk public. Our economy is not weak, but public perception of it is awful. We are sitting on a powder keg where we could see a reactionary populous turn a bad situation into a disaster, and not enough has been done to safeguard against this. Markets may act logically in the long run, but normally don't in the short.