they remain. Back in 1958 the pioneer computer scientist Herbert Simon confidently predicted that a computer would be the world’s chess champion by 1970; this makes the eventual victory of IBM’s Deep Blue over Gary Kasparov a bit of a letdown. And building a computer that plays high-level chess turns out to be an easy problem—nowhere near as hard as, say, designing a robot that can vacuum your living room, an achievement that is still probably many decades away.
Even where computers have become ubiquitous—such as in the modern office—it is very questionable how much they actually raise productivity. Recently many companies have begun to realize that when they equip their office workers with computers they also impose huge hidden costs on themselves—because a computer requires technical support, frequent purchases of new software, repeated retraining of employees, and so on. That $2,000 computer on your employee’s desk may well impose $8,000 a year in such hidden costs—and that’s even if the worker does not spend a significant part of the work day playing Tetris or surfing the Net.
And what about technologies that don’t involve manipulating digital information—for example, the technology of daily life? Think, for example, about how a typical middle-class family lives today compared with forty years ago—and compare those changes with the progress that took place over the previous forty years.
I happen to be an expert on some of those changes, because I live in a house with a late-fifties-vintage kitchen, never remodelled. The non-self-defrosting refrigerator and the gas range with its open pilot lights are pretty depressing (anyone know a good contractor?)—but when all is said and done it is still a pretty functional kitchen. The 1957 owners didn’t have a microwave, and we have gone from black and white broadcasts of Sid Caesar to off-color humor on The Comedy Channel, but basically they lived pretty much the way we do. Now turn the clock back another forty years, to 1917—and you are in a world in which a horse-drawn wagon delivered blocks of ice to your icebox, a world not only without TV but without mass media of any kind (regularly scheduled radio entertainment began only in 1920). And of course back in 1917 nearly half of Americans still lived on farms, most without electricity and many without running water. By any reasonable standard, the change in how America lived between 1917 and 1957 was immensely greater than the change between 1957 and the present.
In short, the idea that we are living in an age of dramatic technological progress is mainly hype; the reality is that we live in a time when the fundamental things are actually not changing very rapidly at all.
Now I am not saying that this is anyone’s fault. If Bill Gates turns out to be no Henry Ford, that is no reflection on his abilities. Really productive ideas, like internal combustion and the assembly line, are hard to find. It is no tragedy if we have to make do with second-rate inventions like the personal computer until the next Model T comes along. But the techno-hype that surrounds us has some real costs. It causes businesses to waste money; it causes politicians to seek high-tech fixes (give every child a laptop!) when they should be getting back to the basics (teach every child to read). The slightly depressing truth is that technology has been letting us down lately. Let’s face up to that truth, and get on with our lives.
Four Percent Follies
Recently a lot of influential people have been berating Alan Greenspan and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve for not allowing the economy to grow faster. The most prominent of these critics has probably been Felix Rohatyn, who was proposed though never formally nominated to become the vice-chairman of the Fed. It’s important to note that Rohatyn is not arguing for a modest change in policy, a view that many economists share. What he is arguing for is a massive monetary
Even where computers have become ubiquitous—such as in the modern office—it is very questionable how much they actually raise productivity. Recently many companies have begun to realize that when they equip their office workers with computers they also impose huge hidden costs on themselves—because a computer requires technical support, frequent purchases of new software, repeated retraining of employees, and so on. That $2,000 computer on your employee’s desk may well impose $8,000 a year in such hidden costs—and that’s even if the worker does not spend a significant part of the work day playing Tetris or surfing the Net.
And what about technologies that don’t involve manipulating digital information—for example, the technology of daily life? Think, for example, about how a typical middle-class family lives today compared with forty years ago—and compare those changes with the progress that took place over the previous forty years.
I happen to be an expert on some of those changes, because I live in a house with a late-fifties-vintage kitchen, never remodelled. The non-self-defrosting refrigerator and the gas range with its open pilot lights are pretty depressing (anyone know a good contractor?)—but when all is said and done it is still a pretty functional kitchen. The 1957 owners didn’t have a microwave, and we have gone from black and white broadcasts of Sid Caesar to off-color humor on The Comedy Channel, but basically they lived pretty much the way we do. Now turn the clock back another forty years, to 1917—and you are in a world in which a horse-drawn wagon delivered blocks of ice to your icebox, a world not only without TV but without mass media of any kind (regularly scheduled radio entertainment began only in 1920). And of course back in 1917 nearly half of Americans still lived on farms, most without electricity and many without running water. By any reasonable standard, the change in how America lived between 1917 and 1957 was immensely greater than the change between 1957 and the present.
In short, the idea that we are living in an age of dramatic technological progress is mainly hype; the reality is that we live in a time when the fundamental things are actually not changing very rapidly at all.
Now I am not saying that this is anyone’s fault. If Bill Gates turns out to be no Henry Ford, that is no reflection on his abilities. Really productive ideas, like internal combustion and the assembly line, are hard to find. It is no tragedy if we have to make do with second-rate inventions like the personal computer until the next Model T comes along. But the techno-hype that surrounds us has some real costs. It causes businesses to waste money; it causes politicians to seek high-tech fixes (give every child a laptop!) when they should be getting back to the basics (teach every child to read). The slightly depressing truth is that technology has been letting us down lately. Let’s face up to that truth, and get on with our lives.
Four Percent Follies
Recently a lot of influential people have been berating Alan Greenspan and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve for not allowing the economy to grow faster. The most prominent of these critics has probably been Felix Rohatyn, who was proposed though never formally nominated to become the vice-chairman of the Fed. It’s important to note that Rohatyn is not arguing for a modest change in policy, a view that many economists share. What he is arguing for is a massive monetary
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