Extremely worthwhile question, long overdue.<p>Productivity, especially in relevant areas like administration, stagnated despite computers hitting every desk. I read the Cowen book (Complacent Class) at the same time I was reader Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs." Heterodox writers from both sides of the spectrum. Same observation.<p>On the face of it, it doesn't make sense. How could, for example, a local college's administration not have become more efficient because of computers?<p>A factory's productivity, which has legible inputs and outputs is <i>really</i> different to something which doesn't.<p>Software is management technology, perhaps, but only in cases that management technology is pretty efficient already. Modern warehouses, ports and stuff <i>are</i> more productive because of software. But, they we already pretty efficient. They already had pretty well formalized, legible processes.<p>That said, software is also a tool. Say your job is to receive applications, payments or such. You process them. File. Respond. Software is undeniably a good tool for such things. We can't abstract that away by looking at the top level trends. It <i>is</i> a productivity tool for administrative tasks. Top line trends don't suggest a productivity gain, but I'm not willing to conclude that software is not an administrative tool.<p>On the face of it, banks, universities, government departments, the legal sector, accounting, perhaps the whole finance sector are bigger today, not smaller. They have computers now, which <i>are</i> productivity tools. WTF is going on?<p>Do we have more justice, better records? What is "productivity" anyway, outside of legible productivity like a factory's?