Category — General

IT and Productivity.

The Economist has two articles [1 2] on how American productivity has grown rapidly, and the role of technology.

A puzzle [in the American economy] is why productivity accelerated over the past three years at the same time as IT investment fell. After all, a host of studies have concluded that most of the revival in productivity growth is linked to the production or the use of computers and software.

One explanation is that the productivity gains from IT investment do not materialise on the day that a computer is bought. Work by Paul David, an economist at Oxford University, has shown that productivity growth did not accelerate until years after the introduction of electric power in the late 19th century. It took time for firms to figure out how to reorganise their factories around the use of electricity and to reap the full efficiency gains.

Something similar seems to be happening with IT. Investing in computers does not automatically boost productivity growth; firms need to reorganise their business practices as well. Just as the steam age gradually moved production from households to factories, and electricity eventually made possible the assembly line, so computers and the internet are triggering a sweeping reorganisation of business, from the online buying of inputs to the outsourcing of operations. Yet again, though, the benefits are arriving years after the money has been spent.

IT's impact is likely to continue for the foreseeable future:

Pundits who reckon that 3-4% productivity growth is sustainable for another 5-10 years are, in effect, making the bold claim that IT will have a far bigger economic impact than any previous technological revolution. During the prime years of the world's first industrial revolution÷the steam age in the 19th century÷labour productivity growth in Britain averaged barely 1% a year. At the peak of the electricity revolution, during the 1920s, America's productivity growth averaged 2.3%.

Yet there are still good reasons to believe that IT will have at least as big an economic impact as electricity, with average annual productivity growth of perhaps 2.5% over the coming years. One is that the cost of computers and communications has plummeted far more steeply than that of any previous technology, allowing it to be used more widely throughout the economy. Over the past three decades, the real price of computer-processing power has fallen by 35% a year; during 1890-1920, electricity prices fell by only 6% a year in real terms.

IT is also more pervasive than previous technologies: it can boost efficiency in almost everything that a firm does÷from design to accounting÷and in every sector of the economy. The gains from electricity were mainly concentrated in the manufacture and distribution of goods. This is the first technology that could significantly boost productivity in services.

So, IT does matter, but only if companies are willing to change the way they do business. “The most dramatic gains happen when companies use technology to understand better what they do in order to change how they do it, says Navi Radjou, an analyst at Forrester, a technology-research firm. The main issue slowing productivity gains down, he adds, is 'grandma syndrome'÷a reluctance to ditch tried and tested processes.”

This is what SMEs need to do – adopt technology and revamp the way they think and do their business. This is the next frontier for tech companies.

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

i'm not sure that this is driven by IT as much as it is driven by a culture of self-exploitation that has been spread through various memes… i suspect that as you see the generation of self-exploiters age more and more, this will drop off.

Governments and Open-Source.

The Economist writes:

Across the globe, governments are turning to open-source software which, unlike proprietary software, allows users to inspect, modify and freely redistribute its underlying programming instructions. Scores of national and state governments have drafted legislation calling for open-source software to be given preferential treatment in procurement. Brazil, for instance, is preparing to recommend that all its government agencies and state enterprises buy open source.

Other countries are funding open-source software initiatives outright. China has been working on a local version of Linux for years, on the grounds of national self-sufficiency, security and to avoid being too dependent on a single foreign supplier. Politicians in India have called on its vast army of programmers to develop open-source products for the same reasons. This month, Japan said it would collaborate with China and South Korea to develop open-source alternatives to Microsoft's software. Japan has already allocated ´1 billion ($9m) to the project.

Policymakers like open source for many reasons. In theory, the software's transparency increases security because ãbackdoorsä used by hackers can be exposed and programmers can root out bugs from the code. The software can also be tailored to the user's specific needs, and upgrades happen at a pace chosen by the user, not the vendor. The open-source model of openness and collaboration has produced some excellent software that is every bit the equal of commercial, closed-source products. And, of course, there is no risk of being locked in to a single vendor.

Economics is a big driver for governments to use and encourage open-source software. Governments cannot pirate software (purchase through tenders), and so their total cost of ownership can be quite high – especially in emerging markets.

In India, most state governments and the Central government have been incredibly slow to recognise the power and potential of open-source. India should have been leading the world in the use of open-source, but we aren't even following. Yes, the President has made some positive statements, but it hasn't gone much beyond that.

India can define a new architecture for computing for the rest of the world. This can create a much wider use of computers and also make its people and companies more efficient. A little push from the government can go a long way in shaping a domestic software products industry, which can, over the years, become as big as the services industry.

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

this ia another great bit of infor from emergic

24 Hour PLATO People. It does not get any more 'L33+ or 0LD SK00L than the PLATO system, the O.G. of social software. It looks like PLATO may get some of the recognition it deserves, from a book-in-progress called PLATO People:

The PLATO system, started way back in 1960, was developed as a technological solution to delivering individualized instruction … As the system grew and evolved, it became, pretty much by accident, the first major online community, in the current sense of the term. In the early 1970s, people lucky enough to be exposed to the system discovered it offered a radically new way of understanding what computers could be used for: computers weren't just about number-crunching (and delivering individualized instruction), they were about people connecting with people. For many PLATO people who came across PLATO in the 1970s, this was a mind-blowing concept.

Yep.

The Research Questions page is asking for help

Then, there's the personal and social aspects: I'm interested in learning about how people made friends (or enemies) via PLATO; about their experiences in PLATO notesfiles and P-Notes and TERM-talk; how PLATO affected their lives and careers; those kinds of things. Who out there (besides me!) met their spouse through PLATO?

with these questions and more. If you're interested in PLATO, watch this space, and if you used it or worked on it, get in touch with Brian Dear, the author. [Corante: Social Software]

——

there were only a few things more old school…. but yeah this is a great project. i've hear stee jones from uic talk about plato before, interesting system it is.

well i was thinking that a university should establish with the NSF or otherwise a center for Innovative Applications of Computation and Networks in the Social Sciences. This would possibly even include humanities, etc. The goal would be to explore and develop new ways of using computers and networks in the Social Sciences, try modeling like in Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, try Play Based Simulation, etc. etc., but avoid the heavily normalized applications in economic modeling, social research methods. This is not because they aren't applicable but because we already know how to do those effectively, we need to find new tools and applications to do things that they can't do, and i know many people will think there is nothing that their little bit of expertise can't solve…. Let's avoid that kind of person, exploration and innovation in a social science inclusively imagined environment.

Anyone want to give me $10m to launch this?

there are many people who seem to think Virginia and with it Virginia Tech are out of the woods, well i have to tell you, i agree with this editorial, and think that it is going to get worse before it gets better. i want a responsible forward looking government that isn't afraid of doing the right thing for the state, like Raise Taxes appropriately, progressively.

well this news strikes me hard, even though i knew it was coming. he was just one of those people that tried to do right by telling the stories of other people, and thus he let you know in a deep manner that not all was right with the world. The world will miss him.

Guardian obituary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1040733,00.html?=rss

bbc obituary: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3103164.stm

nashville city paper: http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=33&screen=news&news_id=26524

Miami Herald: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/6754620.htm

metafilter: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/28248

http://www.johnnycash.com/

http://www.maninblack.net/

http://www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=75

this article is a clear condemnation of the Republican anti-science anti-education agenda, why is anti-science implied anti-education, because you can't teach science if you don't know and support science, because what you end up teaching is decidedly not knowledge, but closer to ideology in disguised as science. This is not just a scientific problem, but also if you don't know the humanities and the arts, you can't really teach them, just as if you don't believe in rights, you can't recognize them.

ICSTM 2004: Transforming Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Success
Venue: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Date: Wednesday 19th May 2004 to Friday 21st May 2004
Paper Deadline:Wednesday 1st October 2003
Topics of Interest:Electronic Learning,Social Issues
Further Information:See conference web site at
http://www.icstm.org/

kindly don't think you are poor:

here faculty generally make over $30000, some make much much more, some a bit less, depending on a variety of things, but still that makes them richer than 96% of the world minimally.

graduate students on stipend, figure tuition and a few hundred a month comes to $20k, well that put you in the top 8% of the world in salary…..

i know it seems like people are poor in respect to the students driving around in corvettes and other $50k autos or the like, but remember it is all a matter of population and wealth in the end, perhaps it is time to reconsider that inheritance tax…

that talk like a pirate day is next friday, yes next friday, this rare opportunity to talk like a pirate all day long only comes through once each year and thus should be savored for its pure formal ritualized delite.