Food for Thought: Declining Productivity is Due to Waning Technological Inventiveness #TechStagnation

This article is very interesting in trying to explain why productivity is only growing at 0.4% in recent years.

In somewhat different ways, John Fernald of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, two leading productivity experts, have argued that the greatest productivity gains from information technology came years ago, and that recent inventions look puny by comparison. Compare Facebook with the Internet, or the Apple Watch with the personal computer. Maybe inventiveness has not waned, but the productivity-enhancing impacts of inventions have.

The Apple watch is certainly case-in-point in this argument. I was reading a different article on how businesses are trying to bend over backward trying to figure out how to incorporate the Apple Watch into the workplace. All of the reasons just looked like a way for executives to get a free Apple Watch and not a tool to make them more productive. I mean anything work related you can see on the watch you can see on your iPhone already and much easier at that.

All Facebook and Twitter have done is made yet another place to show you ads for things you don't want to buy. Mobile ad revenue is going strait up over there but it certainly isn't helping anyone do their jobs more efficiently. This article actually says they might be a drag on productivity as well depending on how much of the workday they take up. Most of the ideas where companies help your company "get on social media" are pretty much a way to put up a digital billboard.

While Big Data is pretty much a way to parse the mountains of somewhat useless data and hopefully find a use for it. I watched an IBM ad that had some way of figuring out who is important in your emails and social interactions. Do you really need that at most businesses? I know the people in my department are important and my boss is the most important. I saved my company the millions it would have taken IBM to implement this useless application.

The Internet of Things is basically an excuse to sell you stuff you don't really need. If my refrigerator tells me when my milk goes bad and re-orders the milk I would need to turn that function off. I don't always want milk so I don't want my refrigerator making decisions for me.

What I noticed is most of the technology today is just deck-chair re-arrangers. A thinner phone where you can use the edge of it for something or another. A bigger phone with a better camera and display. A laptop that turns into a tablet. A way to watch TV shows and 2nd run movies at home for small sum a month. A car service where you don't need a taxi license to participate in and can be called using an app. A different app that rents out your house when you are away. That is the innovation in 2015. These are all things that replace something that we already had. Uber vs. the taxi, the Samsung Edge vs. a regular smart phone, Netflix vs. Blockbuster Video.

Its all just a little nudge better and a little cheaper cost for pretty much the same thing as last year. I mean a bigger iPhone is not going to do anything special to move the productivity bar. You will still read the same email, use the same apps, and waste time with the same games and social media. So the idea that technological stagnation is something that might be putting a damper on productivity growth is a very good one indeed.