Originally published by David Sable on LinkedIn: Does High Tech Make Us Highly Productive?
[T]he [US] government reported disappointingly slow growth and continuing stagnation in productivity. The rate of productivity growth from 2011 to 2015 was the slowest since the five-year period ending in 1982.
So reported The New York Times in a June 6th article entitled, “Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive.”
The most prominent pessimist is Robert J. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University. His latest entry in the debate is his new book, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth.” Mr. Gordon contends that the current crop of digital innovations does not yield the big economic gains of breakthrough inventions of the past, like electricity, cars, planes and antibiotics.
On the same day in June, The New York Times further reported in an associated article entitled,“In Search of Tech’s Productivity Boost”:
What’s missing from the equation is a demonstrable improvement in overall productivity, as Steve Lohr writes. The productivity question has split economists. Some argue that the tech industry simply isn’t creating tools that help workers work more effectively. Others believe that recent trends like artificial intelligence and big data analysis are too new to have had much of an impact.
Now ask yourself…do you personally feel more productive?
Leave aside the hours you spend on Facebook posting pictures that are the equivalent of the dreaded slideshows of your parents’ era; forget about the ranting mad tweets you send when the line is too long, and never mind the binge watching that makes you bleary eyed and sluggish the next day….
Do you feel more productive or not?
Frankly – as that is me, myself, I was referring to above – the answer is yes. I do feel more productive. It’s easier to communicate, faster to transact, quicker to find information – in short, I waste less time (forget the stuff above) getting key tasks done, and I imagine many of you feel the same.
So if that’s true, how is this possible? As quoted in the Financial Times:
Global economic growth has been below the 20-year average in six of the past eight years. Productivity growth has slowed around the world amid talk of a secular stagnation. And as Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, emphasized last week in her latest Internet Trends report, the growth in the number of global internet users is flattening off at about 3bn and smartphone uptake is slowing too.
And yet “…Only 18 percent of the American economy is living up to its ‘digital potential.'”