Beware of Productivity Paradoxes

Few recent technological innovations were better poised to become a productivity slam dunk than the personal computer. Spreadsheets, word processors, databases, presentation software, email – the list of programs that could vastly simplify common tasks seemed endless.

As I reported in ​a 2021 op-ed for WIRED​, however, reality proved more complicated. For example:

• A 1991 article in the New York Times quoted an economist who said that despite heavy spending on computers, “white-collar productivity has stagnated.” He concluded: “No longer are chief executives confident that throwing computers at their office staffs will result in greater efficiency.”
• A study covering the period from 1987 to 1993 calculated that computers added only 0.2 percentage points a year to business output growth, leading a contemporaneous summary to declare that the “impact of computers on recent productivity growth has been vastly overstated.”
• In his 1997 book, Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner argued that these findings underscored what he called a “productivity paradox.”

I thought about this article recently as I continue grappling with our current AI moment. It’s natural to assume that this technology, which clearly makes certain common professional activities easier, will make our working lives more productive overall.

But as the early years of desktop computing taught us: it’s not always so simple.

Most of us would not want to go back to a time before PCs; we’ve become accustomed to their conveniences. But it’s also true that their impact on our output was never as tremendous or as clear-cut as that of prior innovations, such as the steam engine or the power loom, and that integrating them effectively into the workforce took a long time.

Similarly, it seems unlikely that AI is a technological genie that will be fully returned to its bottle. Much like early PCs, there is too much untapped convenience to be ignored. But as we struggle to figure out how to think about the promise of these tools, it’s worth remembering that in the digital world, productivity doesn’t always match our expectations.

P.S., That 2021 Wired article was inspired by the release of my New York Times bestselling book, ​A World Without Email​. If you want to learn more about the uneven impact of computing and network technology on knowledge work, I highly recommend checking out that book. It’s one of my most deeply researched and provocative titles…