Pcs Deliver Only Marginal Increase In Productivity Author Says Businesses Aren’t Getting Their Money’s Worth Out Of Information Revolution

When Tom Landauer sees computers lined up on the desks of offices he visits, he doesn’t see cutting-edge information technology in the glowing green screens. He doesn’t see the office of the future. He sees wasted potential.

Landauer, a psychology professor at the University of Colorado, says computers have not fulfilled the promise to increase productivity by making office work more efficient.

In his new book “The Trouble with Computers,” Landauer contends that when studied in a work environment, computers are generally misused, underutilized and poorly designed.

The industrial revolution, he contends, catapulted the nation forward by 30,000 percent, while the ‘information revolution” has provided only a 25 percent increase in efficiency. Productivity growth, in fact, has slowed since the 1970s, and he sees a direct link to the time computers were introduced.

Landauer says that despite the popularity of workplace computers, the nation would have been better off to take the trillions of dollars spent on office and retail store computers and place it in market rate bonds.

In his book, Landauer argues that the time it takes to learn new programs, along with the investment in the system itself and the staff necessary to manage it, often constitute a waste of time and resources.

“People like computers because they like toys,” he says. “Most businesses’ mission is not to buy toys, it’s to buy tools to help work get done better, and they’re not getting their money’s worth.”

Landauer says computers eventually will improve the workplace, but so far they haven’t lived up to their potential.

He blames computer designers, who seem more concerned with bells and whistles than with what performs best in the office environment.

“We don’t just measure a car by how many RPMs it gets, but we’ve done that with computers,” he says. “We’re measuring RPMs without measuring how easy they are to drive or whether they get you where you want to go.”