The great technology swindle: June 22, 1998 issue of New Thinking

June 22, 1998 New Thinking:
The great technology swindle

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June 22, 1998

The great technology swindle

By Gerry McGovern

The Sex Pistols sang about the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, but the computer industry has been responsible for a Great Technology Swindle which would put any punk to shame.

Isn’t it reasonable to expect that computers have made life more productive and easier?

Paper consumption used to double every twenty years. The computer has caused paper consumption to double every ten years. So much for the Paperless Office. In the United States, productivity growth for the period 1973-1993 was less than half that for the period 1950-1973.

Some 60% of the annual corporate IT budget goes toward replacing outdated equipment and updating software that does even more of the things you don’t really need it to do.

In the United States, aggregate real wages have essentially stagnated for fifteen years. Add to this the fact that the median number of hours worked per week there rose from 40.6 in 1973 to 50.8 in 1997. So much for the leisure society.

If you want more facts, read Thomas Landauer’s 1995 book, The Trouble With Computers. He’ll pile them on. One of the more striking studies he refers to had two groups writing letters. One used type writers, the other word processors. Both achieved equal productivity.

Let me let you in on a secret: Computers were never meant to help people. They were meant for far more important tasks, such as breaking war codes, making nuclear bombs, landing men on the moon and, of course, replacing people.

You would be amazed at the sheer contempt computer pioneers had for the human race. In 1958, Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell confidently predicted that computers would before long be able to do anything a human could do.

In 1974, B. F. Skinner stated that, “The disastrous results of common sense in the management of human behavior are evident in every walk of life, from international affairs to the care of a baby, and we shall continue to be inept in all these fields until a scientific analysis clarifies the advantage of a more effective technology.”

We have been conned and swindled. Billions upon billions have been spent in a great silicon addiction. Computers have so infiltrated our lives that we couldn’t turn back now even if we wanted to.

Is there no hope? Fortunately there is. It’s called the Internet.

Before the Internet the computer was a computational device. A logical device. A scientific device. With the Internet, the computer is also a communication device. There is nothing more intensely human than communicating. Communicating humanizes the computer because it forces the computer industry to think about people. Not about more speed, more memory, more software. About people. And people’s needs.

Wake up! People are sick and tired of the next best thing. We are sick and tired of a computer industry which is dominating our lives and which has delivered us longer working weeks, reduced productivity and more paper. We are sick of an industry that is obsessed with itself and its petty little internal war games.

Not surprisingly, the Internet was a result of people power. It has thrived, not because it was particularly fast or slick, but because it was incredibly useful to people. Would that new software and hardware had the same objective.

Gerry McGovern

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The Internet has thrived, not because it was particularly fast or slick, but because it was incredibly useful to people.