Re: Is speed/technology really progress? (was Re:Progress t

gkeizur@smtpgate.icos.com
Thu, 19 Jan 95 07:29:03 PST

Well written! I had to come out of lurker mode to put my two cents' worth
in.

I just finished a critical analysis for my MIS class on a discussion of
Erik Brynjolfsson's paper (Communications of the ACM, 36:12, pp66-77, Dec
'93) on "The productivity paradox in information technology." The thrust
of the paper is that researchers are having an extremely hard time
measuring _any_ increase in productivity as a result of capital spending on
computers and IT applications, with the possible exception of areas that
are purely data entry-dependent such as transaction processing. The
service sector, which is the business area that has made the largest
investment in IT, has shown a slowdown in productivity by several measures.

The author's contention basically is that the metrics of traditional
productivity measurement may not apply to IT-based investment, but I'm not
so sure. Maybe, as Stever says, faster isn't necessarily better, and more
information may just lead to confusion and chaos without time taken to
digest it. Companies that have given into the unrelenting hype about IT
have spent millions on strategic information systems and have wound up with
very expensive white elephants. CIOs that were heros of the IT profession
have been fired. Could it be that the touted Information Age will take an
unexpected turn because of some inherent limit to the amount of information
processing humans are able to take on?


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Is speed/technology really progress? (was Re:Progress to sw
Author: learning-org@world.std.com at Internet
Date: 1/17/95 5:11 PM

>> I found myself troubled, again, by remarks of a former client regarding
>the > importance of speed in business success.

>I think there's something to this. I worked in high tech for
>seventeen years, and one major reason I got out was that I began to
>hypothesize the following feedback loop: