Productive paradigm?
YOU know how the new information tech- nology is making us all more productive? How it has rewritten economic laws and her- alded a brave new paradigm where growth can last for ever? Well, it hasn't. Academic economists have come to suspect this, and Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley has worked it out for himself. His firm has wired him up for sound with a laptop think-pad, an electronic calendar and a Bloomberg screen. He has voice-mail (on two telephones) and e-mail. He has remote access to all these devices, and remote people have access to him. It never stops. He may or may not be more productive but he is certainly having to work longer hours, and many of those hours are wished on him by the system. He is flood- ed out with e-mails — so temptingly easy to circulate at the touch of a button — and his electronic mailbox can take him an hour a day to clear. Yes, Morgan Stanley gives its man a start-of-the-art filter and folder man- agement system, which may keep his e- mails in order but can scarcely do his think- ing for him. Thinking still has to be done with the old, cerebellar technology.
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