

American Workers Say Internet Makes Them More Productive - dnetesn
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/american-workers-say-internet-makes-them-more-productive/?ref=technology&_r=0

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IvyMike
> the research did uncover a few unexpected insights... Only 4 percent of
> those surveyed said social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were
> “very important” to their jobs.

I'm gonna guess that 96% of people would say that this result was completely
expected.

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analog31
Define "productive." I define it as the marginal value added by a unit of
labor input. Otherwise, productivity is just a feeling.

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reboog711
For the purposes of this article; I'm not sure if it matters how we define
productivity; only whether the Internet makes us "more" productive.

I define productivity as being to finish something. I believe the Internet
helps me--a a programmer--produce more efficiently.

Some of that is social networks, because I'm hooked up to 400 or so
programmers on twitter and often they can answer a simple question quicker
than a Google search [despite the fact that I usually only go to Twitter to
complain about my problem not to look for a solution].

Sites like StackOverflow--or even personal blogs--have saved me days or even
weeks accomplishing "non-routine" tasks from consuming Twitter feeds to
communicating with LDAP to securing a server with ColdFusion on it. I can
accomplish such tasks more quickly by relying on the the knowledge of others;
as opposed to having to discover it all myself.

[Repeat last paragraph for things like libraries and frameworks whose
circulation would be much more limited without Internet access]

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blaze33
I guess this post deserves a productivity/self-assessment chart in the spirit
of this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802454)

