Genuine Progress Can’t Be Measured In Bytes, Megahertz

Revenge of the Nerds is not just a bad movie.

It is real life in today’s office environment, where computer culture know-it-alls are the new workplace elites.

But don’t let the digital-age demigods and goddesses get you down.

They’ll get their comeuppance, these haughty high-flying techies.

A growing phalanx of socio-economic futurists have calculated that by the year 2025 most work as we now know it will no longer exist. And today’s technocrats will be displaced by machines that tend, talk to, and interpret machines.

But meantime, millions of workers have been diminished, degraded and discarded by what corporate giants with vested interests in the knowledge explosion hail as a golden age of progress.

But whose progress?

Has the information revolution produced great leaps in literacy, in learning, in art and literature, in education?

No - none of the above.

Have computers contributed to greater understanding and harmony between people, cultures, races, sexes - heightened spirituality?

Sadly, the answers are all too obvious.

Well, have automation and computerization ended poverty, raised living standards, created better jobs, provided more leisure?

Hardly. More family members are working longer and harder for less these days than at the dawn of the information age 20 or 30 years ago.

Far from easing labor’s burden, structural unemployment and underemployment have made life harder for countless millions. Not only are those knocked out of jobs or working for less worse off, but so, too, is the rest of society, which must lend the less fortunate a helping hand, retrain them, encourage them not to despair and give up.

Small wonder, with all this progress, that welfare and social programs have proliferated.

But certainly, computers have brought about vast strides in productivity. Or have they?

A recent report by the University of Colorado psychology professor Tom Landauer sizes up the shortcomings of the information revolution to date.

Whereas the industrial revolution achieved a thousandfold improvement in output, so far the information revolution has boosted production by only 25 percent.

Indeed, he says productivity growth has actually slowed since the 1970s, when computers were introduced.

He says the information revolution has not measured up to expectations in large part because computer designers and programmers have acted like the machines are toys instead of serious work tools.

As a consequence, businesses aren’t getting their money’s worth out of ever-escalating investments in machines, maintenance and repairs, replacement, training, retraining, and endless other computerization costs.

In effect, the computer revolution has been vastly overrated and hyped. People don’t rate cars just by how fast they go, but with computers, the professor says, “We’re measuring RPMs without measuring how easy they are to drive and whether they get you where you want to go.”

Does anybody know where this is getting us?

Obviously, millions laid off work and others who labor at lesser jobs are going in reverse.

But 10 times as many who made the transition to a computerized workplace took a step backward, too, in terms of self esteem, image, job satisfaction.

In this regard, older workers and aging baby boomers share the same boat - they both are viewed as over the hill.

The PC generation’s digital bigots automatically assume anyone over 25 or 30 doesn’t get it, even if they do.

Granted, more-mature adults didn’t grow up with computers in the home or classroom. But also true, many don’t necessarily have the desire, the time, or the need to know all there is about computers.

And for them, the proper approach to closing the generation gap is a sensible balance between time and priorities.

For a fact, too great an investment in computer capability can be counterproductive. Those who obsess on expanding their computer knowledge beyond job requirements at the expense of excellence in their assigned tasks are not an asset to anyone.

This is not to say, though, that the digitally overqualified don’t come in very handy in a computer crisis when we mortals desperately need a helping hand.

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel’s column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review