Technology, Etc.

When I arrived at work this morning there was a sign on the door informing the employees that the computer network was down for the indefinite future due to a malfunctioning air conditioning system in the server room. Without access to the various insurance related programs and, of course, the internet, some 200 people sitting in an office park in the middle of the Meadowlands have nothing to do. I work in a paperless office, so there aren’t even any files to review. The only thing that does work is Microsoft Word which is how I am able to type up this blog entry. I will have to wait until the computers are back up to post it.

I got my first office job in 1984, filing medical reports into claim files in a dank basement office in Long Island. There were no computers, and the hottest technology at the time was an early prototype fax machine that used the shiny rolls of ultra thin paper. The copier jammed every third use (well some things never change) and the phone system was state of the art with two lines and a hold button. It’s a wonder anything ever got done.

The most interesting thing to me about the ascension of the PC as the indispensable tool of the office is that there was very little associated rise in productivity. In 1987, Nobel laureate Robert Solow famously observed: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Despite massive investment in IT infrastructure, productivity growth was nonexistent. At the time, this was known as the “Productivity Paradox.” Economists have also made a more controversial charge against the utility of computers: that they pale as a source of productivity advantage when compared to the true industrial revolution, or the invention of the automobile.

While the slow growth in productivity accelerated somewhat at the dawn of the 21st century, it hasn’t reached levels one would expect. Some experts partly attribute this to the integration of the internet into work desktops; thereby giving employees easy access to entertainment they wouldn’t have had a few years ago.

My interest in workplace productivity issues is now completely spent. Look for further entries on such exciting topics as the living organic qualities of the NewJersey Turnpike.