
Technology is changing how we live, but it needs to change how we work - chewymouse
http://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/technology-productivity
======
mpbm
Intuitively I think what's happening is we got that productivity bump around
2000 when most jobs incorporated computers, but we haven't figured out how to
actually make people better.

Computers have made it easier to compose and share and read writing, but it's
still just as hard as it ever was to go from brain to keyboard and from screen
to brain. Computers haven't done anything to reduce the mental effort of
understanding what other people are thinking.

So what's happening is we're using computers to help with all the non-thinking
stuff. We got a bump when we grabbed the low hanging fruit (spreadsheets,
networks, email), but we're seeing diminishing returns on everything else
(chat, entertainment, portability). Computers helped to increase productivity
when they replaced manual labor, like how electronic spreadsheets replaced
literal giant sheets of graph paper marked up with pencil and eraser by people
wearing long rubber gloves. They don't increase productivity when they warn us
about a pothole in the road ahead.

Everything that people added to the world was the result of thinking and
computers have only gone so far towards helping with that.

