( CNN ) -- Last time around , humanity 's savior came in the form of a human messiah . This time , if technology analysts , bankers and venture capitalists are to be believed , it will take the form of a handheld computer otherwise known as a smartphone . That 's right , the new Apple iPhone announced Wednesday is already being credited with saving the United States economy . According to JP Morgan , sales of the new device should boost our nation 's GDP by as much as 0.5 % in the fourth quarter of this year alone . That 's not a misprint , but half a percent of the nation 's economic activity , or $ 3.2 billion . It 's hard to know whether such proclamations - even if true - say as much about the power of smartphones as they do about the weakness of the rest of the economy . In either case , however , I ca n't help but fear yet another hyper-inflated bubble in the making . Maybe smartphones make us 'SuperStupid ' ? First off , most of the projected $ 3.2 billion wo n't be from consumers to Apple , but from wireless carriers subsidizing their subscriber 's purchases in return for contract extensions . That 's not really `` growth '' the way we used to define it in economics class . But that does n't stop us from mistaking wireless as a pure growth industry , and far too many from placing their bets accordingly . Working as I do in New York 's Silicon Alley , it 's hard not to bump into an iPhone app builder or investor everywhere I go . Labs , incubators and angel investing groups are quite focused - some might argue obsessed - with launching the next monster iPhone hit , and then selling before it crashes . Top-ranked iPhone app Draw Something , for example , peaked at around 50 million downloads this spring . This was just in time for its developer to be bought by Zynga for $ 200 million , and then start its descent into obscurity the very next day . Even the students at the graduate digital programs where I teach have shifted from building for computer or the Web to developing for the iPhone . Like garage bands of yesterday , they toil away in the hope of getting the next big hit . Yes , we 've been here before . First time , for me anyway , was the CD-ROM craze . Flashy interactivity , new authoring tools and seemingly infinite storage space led many media publishers to believe that CD-ROMs would be to the digital era what books were to that of text . They obsolesced themselves as a viable format ( mostly by being slow and boring ) even before networking speeds made disks irrelevant . The dotcom boom appeared just as infinite to those in the know . While Amazon has been left standing , Pets.com and Etoys crashed as quickly as they rose . The vast majority of online retailers surprised the Wall Street analysts betting on them . Social media was supposed to solve that problem for the tech industry and NASDAQ alike , but climaxed in the IPO of Facebook , a disappointment so far-reaching it has dragged dozens of social media companies along with it , and sent investors and entrepreneurs looking for greener pastures . The choreography of an Apple event . Like wireless handheld devices and the apps running on them . Everywhere I turn , every conference I attend , every magazine story I read seems to be based on one aspect of these technologies or another . Everyone is hard at work on an iPhone app that lists , maps , or socializes some data set in some new visual way . Pictures over text , text over maps , restaurants close to subways , or apps showing subways with WiFi to download more apps . Do n't get me wrong : Wireless is big , and these devices are here to stay , at least until we get comfortable with apps being embedded in objects and technology being implanted in our bodies . And while the opportunity for corporations to make billions on these apps may be overstated , we may still see a new peer-to-peer marketplace emerge between independent developers and the users of their bounty of applications . But the extent to which entrepreneurs , developers , and even columns like this one depend on Apple and the rest of the wireless computing industry for new grist far exceeds their true impact or potential . So go , get an iPhone . Enjoy it . But find something or someone else to save you . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Douglas Rushkoff .
Douglas ##s : Release of new iPhone is being touted as a big boost to the economy . He says such pronouncements make him think more of a hyper - inflated bubble in the making . He says much of this comes from carriers subsidizing subscribers ' purchases . Rushkoff : Developers , are obsessed with iPhone . Like other tech booms , it too will pass .