May 13, 1990

MY SUSPICIONS were confirmed on Monday when I heard the latest statistics on productivity from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The productivity index measures the relationship between worker output and the time involved in doing a job. And the productivity of America’s workforce plunged a full 1 percent in the first quarter of 1990 — the worst showing since a 1.3 percent fall in the first quarter of 1989.

I thought the news would cause office workers all over the country to strike in protest. Isn’t that why department heads bought millions of computers and subjected everyone to the torture of learning how to use them? Didn’t we all believe that computers were going to make us more productive, let us work fewer hours and get more done in the hours we had to work?

This sad state of affairs is no surprise to any of us who actually spend our days on computers. We can create great-looking documents sitting at our desks, for example. But after you’ve printed one out on the laser printer 15 or 16 times, trying to get that headline in the right place, at some point you’ve got to stop and ask if it would have been faster to send it to the typesetter in the first place. When it comes right down to it, how many computer users actually finish a full day’s work by 5 o’clock?

Stanford University economist Paul David calls this the “productivity paradox” — claiming that rapid technological innovation and sluggish productivity do co-exist. In a paper he wrote last year entitled “Computer and Dynamo: The Modern Productivity Paradox in a Not-too-distant Mirror,” he says the same problem facing the computer industry today occurred in 1831 when the electric dynamo was invented.

Electricity didn’t change the world overnight, either. David says it wasn’t until the 1920s, nearly 100 years after the dynamo was invented, that innovations using electricity began to have a positive effect on industrial productivity statistics. First, inventive engineers had to dream up what they could do with a universal electrical supply system, one that would power everything from arc lights to industrial motors.

The good news is there are some indications that the computer industry is on the verge of creating its own version of that “universal supply system,” despite this week’s statistics.

As I’ve said before, certain visionaries have been baying vainly at the moon for at least a year now about the vast possibilities to be found in evolving beyond pretty documents and spreadsheets, on to the real work of using computer power to help people work together.

Anyone who’s used electronic mail and on-line messaging knows they change the way companies are run. One of the most time-wasting tasks in the universe — printing and distributing memos — is reduced to the push of a button. The need for interminable stupid meetings is cut in half. Sending documents electronically eliminates the need for hard copy-editing, paper-wasting faxes, retyping and a number of other time hogs. Using e-mail and online systems virtually eliminates phone tag and many other work-day frustrations. There are many more dramatic examples, but these alone are plenty enough.

Though the company has been far too quiet about its efforts, NeXT Inc. is on the cutting edge of this revolution. Founder Steve Jobs calls the concept “interpersonal computing,” and despite the fact that the term smacks of buzzword-itis, at its core is the noble and most attainable goal of making human-to-human communication both easy and effective by using state-of-the-art networking technology and software.

Jobs says the NeXT machine’s built-in mail system has already improved productivity in his company so dramatically that they’re actually compiling the results for a study that should be of enormous value to users and vendors alike.

Apple Computer is following quickly in his footsteps, building amazing mail and telecommunications capabilities into its upcoming System 7.0 operating system software for the Macintosh.

Other firms are working on mind-boggling projects in this area as well. But they’ll all defeat the purpose if they don’t remember that their goal must be to create the computer industry’s version of that universal system that transformed electricity from a novelty to a way of life.

For a long time now, both hardware and software vendors have resisted creating the backbone of that system by refusing to set single, clear standards for global and local networks and data formats.

Such standards would make it easy for anyone with a computer to send and receive all kinds of data to or from anyone else with a computer — including text, graphics,video, sound or anything else in digital form. Now that would be productivity. And making customers productive should be the computer industry’s Number One priority, especially after this week’s abysmal news.