> For any employee, the soul-stealing complexity of office machinery such as fax machines, copiers, PCs, voicemail and even coffee makers gives everyone ample cover to studiously never learn how to use them. But the same blank stare accompanies nonmechanical tasks, too. Claire Wexler, an accountant who used to work at a law firm, says lawyers "pretend to be completely flummoxed" by all of those machines as well as "everything related to accounting except for billing." Their message: "I have so many lofty matters on my mind I can't be bothered with mastering this small task," she says.<p>Which is a good thing. The point of having lawyers or accountants is to not waste their time on small tasks. If you want your lawyers spending their time fixing coffee machines, that suggests you shouldn't have lawyers in the first place.<p>One of the worst parts of computers has been loading up everyone with outsourced bureaucracy and paperwork, externalizing the subtle costs. And maybe this is why computerization has done so little for total productivity? <a href="https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/writing/1992-sassone.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/writing/1992-sassone.pdf</a> (excerpts: <a href="https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/writing/index#sassone-1992-section" rel="nofollow">https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/writing/index#sassone-1992-...</a> )