Soon after being given a high tech beat at the Atlanta Business Chronicle, in 1982, I bought my first computer. (The picture was taken in 1981.)
I could suddenly write up an interview or press event in an hour. I would read it out loud and make corrections. Then my super-loud C. Itoh dot-matrix printer would buzz it up onto fanfold paper.
The fanfold would go to typesetters, who created long sheets they would paste onto boards, which became the paper. Plastic squares would be turned into pictures at the printer. The pictures would be clipped to each board and the whole collection driven 50 miles. Most papers were then mailed to subscribers, but some were bound for retail sale.
Back at the front end of this process I bragged I could do the work of three men. The noise, and my attitude, caused the paper to fire me the next year and hire the three men.
A few years later I visited my former boss in Houston and found everyone was working at terminals.
The point is that business productivity is complex. You can’t just have one person learn a technique and get serious gains. Processes must be changed. Change must be managed.
We’ve gotten better at this over 40 years. The problem was especially acute as databases took over early in this century. But middle managers were given other things to do, either managing the computer outputs or moving people around to adapt. Jobs changed. They didn’t disappear.
The same thing is happening now with AI, only faster. Large learning models and machine learning systems are based on databases. But the same rule applies now as applied then. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Unless the database you’re using describes reality the output will be useless.
It can be fun to create a set of Presidential portraits based on Marvel heroes. But real productivity comes from modeling a factory, a supply chain, or a war zone, and gleaning insights that can lead to new processes or to victory.
This process of adaptation is happening even faster today than it did in the 2000s, or in the 1980s. We’re seeing enormous productivity gains in America right now. They’re shocking economists.
The ability to adapt to change is what makes America great.
