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How IT Increases Productivity
Several readers wrote to tell us about a groundbreaking study reported in Computerworld. Researchers at Boston University and MIT analyzed how IT makes people more productive at an individual level. They gathered more than 125,000 email messages, 5 years of project data, and survey responses to see what factors predicted revenue generation and completed projects. Abstracts for the original articles are available. Among the surprises: IT didn't necessarily make projects faster but it did dramatically increase productivity by facilitating multitasking; and IT-supported social networks predicted productivity better than experience did.
... given that browsing slashdot is most likely a sign of lacking productivity.
And you sound like all those KIDS around who are YOUNG and ANNOYING. Don't you have something to spraypaint? Why are you hanging around here bothering us? Go fetch me some coffee, ya little pup. Multitask some cream and sugar in there too.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You remind me of almost every villain the BOFH has ever conquered.
ResidntGeek
Way to throw in a lame Microsoft bash in with your equally weak rhetorical question rant about your obvious hatred of your own job. Are you drunk?
You're right and you're wrong.
Your knowledge is essential for different reasons that you think. Think of the past and the next several generations of IT workers as a solid framework upon which we will build our future.
What do I mean by this?
The problem is that computing is not pervasive and ubiquitous enough to become an afterthought, although the world is coming around to wondering why in the world do we have hordes of men and women serving as flesh and blood scripts, functions, and system calls. If you really think about IT functions, there isn't one thing that could be functionally handled by some kind of robot--from security to network setup, everything is becoming more automated and easily managed by higher level processes. Most of our work can be outsourced to still developing countries because the framework that exists now allows for some pretty sophisticated work to be done by low level employees.
We sit around and bemoan that work (that is several levels below our technical advancement) is being sent elsewhere and then we fiddle around with our computers and write scripts for our own machines which should be developing efficient subroutines itself.
IT is there to facilitate productivity and as long as it's not transparent and as much an afterthought as the sidewalks we walk on, then it eats into productivity.
Imagine an entire generation of intelligent, logical thinking, imaginative men and women devoting themselves to scientific, mathematical, artistic and social pursuits--allowed to do so because there is no such thing as rebooting or installing programs or upgrading hardware (in any real sense that we know of now). Once our engineers get beyond making the best security device or a more efficient kernel and actual using computers to do work (rather than be the work itself) we'll see an explosion of productivity that we haven't seen since--well, since the turn of the 20th century.
But yeah. You're right. Knowledge of the basics and good IT make current businesses more productive and so more profitable. But it doesn't make humans or even society more productive. IT is still at the functional equivalent of the telegraph as far as usage of technology goes.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
I for one welcome our new following, who are now welcoming their IT overlords, who would be us.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
"After a few months, I had stripped parts out of most of them, and had 2 of them working. How many teenagers had a pair of 26" TVs in their room? In the late 70's?"
Considering the high voltages used. Maybe the question should have been. How do children survive childhood?