Can technology reduce productivity rather than raise it?

Received wisdom says tech always improves productivity, but I'm going to give examples of where it actually reduces efficiency.

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Let's start with email

Initially email was a huge boost to productivity. You no longer needed to type out a memo or letter, buy printer paper, print it and then spend money posting it. You just typed and pressed send. The recipient got it within minutes instead of days, and the cost of sending was tiny (just your internet connection).

However, lets look at what happens in offices now. Because of the ease of communication, people send many times more emails than they did printed memos. And where the office has a culture of blame, employees get into the habit of copying everyone into every email, as "proof" they did something (or arse-covering as it is known in the trade).

Now consider the time it takes to sift through all these emails. It's hard to know before you've clicked and opened it whether it contains a message you really need to know about, or if it is just arse-covering stuff. There might be an urgent email in there, so you are forced to open them all to check. Now assume each email takes about 3 minutes to open and read (longer if the person is working on a slow computer and dealing with low bandwidth). Opening 100 emails a day will take 300 minutes, or 5 hours.

I know of one management consultant, who in despair at all the copying-in done and time wasted, hit upon a drastic solution. Just halve the staff. That way it halves the number of people they are copying mail to - so you go from 100 emails a day to just 50, or 2.5 hours spent reading emails. Which frees up time to do the work of the people you have let go!

The most drastic example of email abuse came from Britain's NHS last month. A test message was sent out accidently to 840,000 staff members. But that wasn't what killed the system - it was loads of people replying "what is this all about", and in hitting reply, they also emailed every staff member listed. 200 million emails then tried to make it's way through the system, which duly crashed.

Think about personal email too, and the amount of spam you receive. It's made email worthless compared to texting, or messaging or skyping.

Facebook, Reddit and forums can be time wasters too

Have you ever got into an argument on reddit or a forum? How much time did you waste arguing, replying to everyone who replied to you, googling facts to support your argument and so on? Suddenly your entire evening has gone and you have nothing to show for it apart from being riled up.

In theory facebook should be a good way to connect with close friends and family, but it has become a spam fest where you are the product and target for all and sundry trying to influence you. How much is it adding to your life, and how much is it detracting?

Part of the reason I like Steemit is because it is old-school, where you can read something interesting, or look at some art, and you don't really get drawn into pointless arguments or click-baity stuff. It is a little oasis of sanity in the time-suck the web has become.