h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the old days - in a business - you would call people on the telephone to get stuff done.

Then came the fax - you could send letters quickly, send pictures (sort of). This actually increased productivity.

Then came email. You can send all of the above and more really fast. This has reduced productivity despite the potential to do the opposite.

Problem is this:

- People have forgotten how to write letters and memos. Often it is difficult to understand emails - or they are imprecise if not only badly written. Sort of like the substitute of TV for books making the population functionally illiterate.
- People can send more of them - so you get a load of junk.
- People substitute converstion - So office employees are mutating into beasts that forget how to use the telephone. The only way to get a hold of them is by email (because the voice mail shields them). Questions are replied to by questions, or misunderstood. Days later someone gets the initiative to use the phone and talk to someone to find out what the hell they wanted in the first place.

The whole idea behind productivity is to make the most efficient use of production-resources so that the produced product is made quickly, frequently, inexpensively, and well.

The reality is often at odds with this desire: Henry Ford's production line worked extremely well at making cars...and turning the labour into robots.
The interviews I've heard with call-in centre-operators is that they're expected to handle X-calls in their allotted time; if they don't, they're subject to reprimand, efficiency drills or sacking. The formula for working out this efficiency is based on a mathematical model that supposes no weaknesses on the part of the operators (or anyone else subjected to this) or the needs of the body.
If you've read Jeremy Rifkin's "The End Of Work", you'll alread know this: he goes into the nature of productivity in some detail, pointing out that applying machine-like precision to human beings is a recipe for disaster...
As long as employers keep expecting record profits from the slowly-saturating market, expect people to endure the kind of abuse that unions were created to cope with, and people keep taking jobs that expect/demand productivity, we'll keep having the problem.

I'd be quite interested to see what would happen to Western business if everyone stopped drinking coffee for a week (and no caffeine substitutes, either).

Fruitbat

Depends what you are trying to produce - I've done some "Productivity/Management Consulting" before. The goal of this is to scare someone (like a GM, CFO or President) into thinking they have a big problem reducing their revenues unless they give you some money to do something about it. This produces money for said consultants.

Producing nice things for people, made by people that enjoyed doing it (this is why people spend lots of money on antiques) - does not happen much these days.

Most people I believe just want to be happy, show up at work and be wanted/loved/feel useful, do something worthwhile, and do what is necessary in society to be happy. This normally involves making money - the amount depending on your desires and motivation. I see an increasing social problem as people basically create a lot of noise run around creating more crap to do, in the goal of creating an ever inflating bubble built on.. what? Some get rich, some go broke, and the average person gets more stressed, society becomes more hostile and anonymous.

You could tank up on coffee take your 2 hr bullet train ride to the office, hang around the office for 12 hrs (because if you don't then it looks like you don't do enough), tanking up on coffee then come down with a few (?) drinks at the bar before trying to get to sleep again for another round. Sounds idyllic doesn't it?

Then people hide themselves sending emails - or perhaps feeling brave posts messages on an internet chat group.

Okay...having identified some of the more obvious ills of "industrialised society" and recognising their huge flaws and more positive alternatives, what are we going to do about it? (Besides convening a sub-committe to study the problem and report back before the next hard/software upgrade or CEO turnover, I mean.)

I'm not a very practical person (I dream up a terrific idea that's either too expensive or too complex for those with the money or those receiving the idea to handle, so they end up giving up on it and I end up frustrated at their blindness) so I'll have to pass this one onto someone who's much better at reality than I...

Fruitbat

Not to forget the classic : you are in "creative mode", writing a brilliant, dazzling report that will amaze your managers, delight your clients, cause you to be the envy of your colleagues, when some idiot friend of yours e-mails you a joke about penguins, and you then forget what you were doing and start thinking about the antarctic for the rest of the day.....

Maybe reduce the email problem by having an email agent like the old "Elisa"/"Psycoanalyst" program that replies to most emails by parsing them to see if they look like a meaningful memo. If not it will reply by making up more questions:

eg: "Has your Winker2000 project team finished the analysis of the gooble module?"

answer:
">Has your Winker2000 project team finished the analysis of the Gooble module?
What is it that is so important to you about the Gooble module that makes you ask?"

Then you can go off and do other stuff like talk to people, bend paper clips into nice sculptures, etc.

Actually, I hadn't heard that one before, but getting distracted while composing some piece of writing is certainly far too easy, regardless of what form it's going to take...

This is an example. I came here to talk about productivity and computer and got off on a tangent about composing writing....

So: Having hired the expensive consultant (probably Dogbert, given the popularity of that cartoon on the web (and everywhere else)), the results are that the newest piece of technology about will make everyone's job so much easier that they should get twice as much done in the same amount of time. Therefore...

....usually the secretaries have even MORE work dumped on them, resulting in either a massive slowdown in productivity, or a few secretarial explosions, and sometimes one following the other.

The use of computers in the workplace has resulted in a new attitude: more is expected because more is possible.
In retaliation, those that are expected to do more are doing the same amount of work more slowly so that they appear constantly busy, get the usual amount done and don't explode before dinner....

At which point a consultant is called in to suggest ways of making the company more efficient, which usually requires the purchase of new software or new work habits to get more done in the same amount of time.

Has anyone found or heard of an upgrade to the human central nervous-sytem? Ideally something that can be run on a Mac G4? (That is, something that's Firewire compatible?)

Fruitbat

I think the professional term is "make work project".