🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <mwardCMnuK7.JDI@netcom.com>, mward@netcom.com (Michael Ward) writes:
|> >I'm sorry sir, but I think you might be a little mistaken.  Businesses
|> >used to be doing all their work with paper and pencil and typewritier. 
|> >You're trying to tell me that buying a PC didn't increase their
|> >productivity!!??!!  I do believe the study is correct, but not to this
|> >extent!!!
|> 
|> People used to spend X hours doing their work.  Now they spend X/2 hours
|> doing their work AND X/2 hours trying to figure out how to make the damned
|> computer work.  Net result: no gain in productivity.
|> 

I don't believe this is the right reasoning. The issue is that the
"quality" (at least the superficial quality) of the work has gone up.
To paraphrase Bob Kraut in talking about the similar situation in housework.

  The time spent doing housework has not gone down in the last
  fifty years, even with all the new conviences. The time instead
  has gone to making the percieved quality of the work better. Perhaps 
  it used to take 4 hours every 4 weeks to do a load of laundry. Now it takes
  an hour a week, but you get clean underwear every day. Is this an
  advance?

In the business environment, the amount of time making pictures right,
making spreadsheets more precise, and rewriting to make memos more
precise means the productivity is no higher. The accuracy of the information
is also not necessarily improved with the increase in precision.