I'm still processing.

Will the terrorists take out more airplanes? Are we at risk for satchel nukes? Will somebody dump Anthrax down a subway? How will we go on?

Right around the time I was born (I'm 40, born in 1961), nuclear missiles showed up in Cuba. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we were arguably a very short fuse away from total nuclear desolation. Throughout the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and even the early 90s, we were 20 minutes away from mutually assured destruction.

And yet, we got disco, Happy Days, the microprocessor, a few moon launches, and cell phones. Even if you live under a constant cloud of impending doom, you've got to live.

Back in 1989, as I was driving home from the Apple Multimedia Lab in San Francisco, we got hit with a massive earthquake. A portion of the Bay Bridge dropped into the bay. The upper section of Highway 17 pancaked onto a lower level. All the furniture in my house toppled and I found my cat cowering inside a chair.

Earthquakes happen and still life goes on.

I'm still processing, but I think I'm onto something here. If we can live through the cold war, if we can live through earthquakes, we can live through terrorist threats.

We Americans are a wacky breed. But it's our very wackiness that makes this all possible.

And as for whether we brought this on ourselves, let me explain to you my thinking.

I was born an American. These folks are attacking Americans (although, stupidly, they're also killing off citizens of our allies, those few countries who might be able to keep us under control). Since I was born an American, that's the side I'm on. For good or bad. The bad guys, by definition, are bad guys because they're attacking my side. And that's why they need to be exterminated.

Well, that's not the complete truth. I think they need to be exterminated because they, truly and honestly, committed crimes against humanity.

I'm still processing.

It's been a tough few weeks economically as well. Business is down all over. For a while, it was hard to even think about business in the light (or, perhaps more appropriately, darkness) of this disaster. But commerce is what drives our strength.

Still think it's petty to be thinking about business when talking about this crime? How do you think we, as Americans, could afford to donate the hundreds of millions of dollars we did, in a matter of weeks, to the disaster effort? How do you think it was possible for companies like Microsoft, Cisco, and Apple to each donate tens of millions of dollars to the relief effort?

And how do you think it was possible to fund the development of the portable electronic devices that gave us such an inside view?

You know, now that I think about it, I've got to say, proudly, that technology acquitted itself pretty amazingly well in this disaster. There was the mobile technology that helped us get some of our only information from inside the doomed airplanes. Then, there were all the Internet sites that kept us informed -- and gave us different views of the disaster. And even more, there were the Internet sites that helped people find out about their loved ones.