I have a question about the effects of the (widespread) business use of PCs.
I can remember the pre-PC days: financial reports had to be done by the IT department, and presentations were done with typed transparencies.
The question is: “did the widespread business se of PCs make business more efficient”?
If so , this should have resulted in a big profit increase for business-did this (in fact) take place?
It doesn’t necessarily translate into profit increase - because everyone is making the same transition it is just keeping costs in line with others. Competitive pressure reduces the benefit to the company other than staying in business. Consumers certainly benefit from lower costs.
I’m wondering about the title, particularly the “SA GNP.” So is the question about the gross national product of Saudi Arabia (which has a country code of SA) and how it was impacted by PCs becoming common? Or is it about South Africa? South America?
Ditto
My guess is that the OP probably meant to type “USA GNP”.
…and despite having been one of those IT guys that was really pushing PCs at the time, my suspicion is that no, they didn’t make businesses more productive - they just made hordes of business analysts capable of generating more spreadsheets. (automated as opposed to manual)
In the early 1990s there was a lot of discussion about the “productivity paradox” - the supposed lack of impact of computers on productivity. Here is one example from 1993, at the time I read something similar in the Harvard Business Review. I think there was productivity improvements even then, but they were hard to measure, and it took time for things like the reduction in the amount of administrative support staff to take effect.
Today it is pretty clear that there has been a big impact on productivity. But there is no reason for this to increase the GNP, since making things more efficiently doesn’t necessarily mean you make more of them, and the impact of PCs in the office may not affect output much at all. Factory automation predates this by quite a bit. And, as mentioned, it might not impact profitability much at all.
In the 1990s some of this productivity increase did go into workers’ paychecks, at least.
I think another aspect of this is that the economy grew with the introduction of the PC due to entirely new entirely new categories of jobs being created. Prior to the PC and the home console system, which followed a similar path, I can’t think of anyone who made their living writing game software. (Computer games certainly existed, right back to the very late 1940s, but making a living off of them wasn’t possible; computers were serious business back then, even the research systems, which meant all gaming that went on was non-commercial.)
The problem with doing this by looking at the GNP is that the GNP is a measure of a chaotic system with many, many variables, and picking out influences is generally not possible.
You need to look at the categories of work as a whole.
The 1980’s and 90’s when computers came into more widespread use, were also the time when the economic problems of the 70’s came home to roost, buyouts, takeovers, deregulation and Wall Street takeovers turned the business world upsidedown.
The typical US business before then was topheavy with managers; they all had secretaries to do their typing. Everything was done in slow motion with interoffice mail. One by one, these established dinosaurs died or downsized; usually because of the buyouts or foreign manufacturers requiring them to compete. (We are seeing the tail end of this as the recent crash required auto makers to finally ditch much of the cushy pay and pensions that were part of the union contract.) Big business shed whole layers of middle management and their secretaries, as spreadsheets and email made it easierfor managers to track things closer with less effort. With everyone typing their own reports, memos and mail, secretaries are the modern dodos, a dying breed.
Plus, computers as process control devices in manufacturing have allowed more precise control of the processes, wth better quality and less waste.
A computer is a power tool for the brain - much as a power saw can allow a carpenter to cut a lot more wood a lot faster, a computer allows a lot of the “organizing” work of management to be done more efficiently.
Is the economic shift a direct result of the computer? probably not… but the computer definitely helps a lot.
I agree with this analysis-even top exectives type their own memos these days.
the real question: did the introduction of PCs actually make things MORE efficient?
I hear CONSTANT complaints about the sheer volume of emails-reading them (and replying to them) consmes hundreds of hours.
In the same way, financial reporting (via spreadsheets)-now many people get involved in this-amybe lots of wasted efforts?
It is interesting to reflect on how middle-management has shrunk-I used to visit corporate clients (GM, Ford, Chrysler,etc.) and wonder at all the buildings filled with offices-what on earth did those people do?
The Empire State Bilding was built in 18 months-today, it would take as long to get the permits, environmental impact staements, etc.