Has Productivity Peaked?

Putney Barnes writes "A columnist on silicon.com is arguing that computing can no longer offer the kind of tenfold per decade productivity increases that have been the norm up to now as the limits of human capacity have been reached. From the article: 'Any amount of basic machine upgrading, and it continues apace, won't make a jot of difference, as I am now the fundamental slowdown agent. I just can't work any faster'. Peter Cochrane, the ex-CTO of BT, argues that "machine intelligence" is the answer to this unwelcome stasis. "What we need is a cognitive approach with search material retreated and presented in some context relative to our current end-objectives at the time." Perhaps he should consider a nice cup of tea and a biccie instead?"

Obviously...

[Digital Vomit]

Unfortunately I am now approaching stasis. Any amount of basic machine upgrading, and it continues apace, won't make a jot of difference, as I am now the fundamental slowdown agent.

Obviously Mr. Cochrane has never tried using Microsoft Vista.

Has he installed Vista yet?

[techmuse]

It sounds like he just hasn't attempted to run Vista yet...

Re:The myth of 'productivity'

[Anonymous Coward]

> In terms of 'productivity', I'd think that the lawyers, paralegals, court administrators and so on have improved by 10 times. In terms of how much useful stuff gets done, it's exactly constant.

And in a law office, that constant is 0.

Give him what he deserves!

[Dareth]

The author states: "I need something that monitors my activities, anticipates my next move and automatically satisfies my needs."

He deserves a paperclip jabbed in his eye, or even worse, somebody turn on his MS Office assistant and unlease the fury of Clippy on his ass!

Re:Windows is the bad answer

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Perhaps if you'd finally get around to upgrading from Win98, this wouldn't be a problem...

Re:The myth of 'productivity'

[tjrehac]

Solutions: 1. Recommend him for a position somewhere else in the company or beyond... 2. Tell him his laugh is a little distracting at times 3. Tell him that girl in marketing keeps asking about him, you've heard she wants him to ask her out - but that she'll probably turn him down the first ten or so times he asks 4. Enlist him in the National Guard 5. Add a link to a porn site in one of his friend's blogs - and turn him in when he follows it 6. Ask to be moved, or ask to have him moved 7. Pay to have a leadership coach to come in and tell him his laugh is annoying 8. Make him beleive that everyone else in the department is making 2x as him Leaving off the sig for productivity sake.

HW may slow it's pace...

[Jennifer York]

but I see a SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) solution to the problem. These building blocks will be used to scale the productivity of the developer. As more and more services like Flickr, Google Maps, and the like continue to provide key services to the developers, our mashups will become more compelling. Just remember to make your mashup a service so that someone may build upon it when you are done.

Cochrane?

[Chemisor]

I'd like to see what his grandson Zephram has to say about this...

Re:Windows is the bad answer

[Ingolfke]

Productivity would be UP if Windows did not have to reboot everytime I clic somewhere.

1995 called and they want their Windows jokes back.

hold on... apparently 2001 is calling and they want their "1995 called..." jokes back.

Ah ha

[proxy318]

What we need is a cognitive approach with search material retreated and presented in some context relative to our current end-objectives at the time.

Oh is that what we need? Maybe we can synergize our core-concepts to think outside of the box, thereby ensuring we work smarter not harder, and then we can leverage our paradigms to holistically obtain next generation perspective.

Is it so damn hard to to say "we need a new approach"?

Re:Cough

[bloobloo]

Dude, this is slashdot. We don't want talk of intelligent design here.