>I don’t think productivity was ever the goal of this software. I'm not entirely sure about this. During the early digitization era productivity was a big driv

>I don’t think productivity was ever the goal of this software. I'm not entirely sure about this. During the early digitization era productivity was a big driver. Modern word processors are a godsend if you've ever tried to typewrite a document for publication (forget anything with complex formulae) or dealt with actual physical spreadsheets? Office itself and it's now many clones is a fantastic set of tools for productivity. My opinion is that we've created a world in technology now that drives technology for the sake of tech and financial drivers. I regularly deal with people who think it would be a great idea to build a system to automate some aspect of business that's already well optimized or generalize something they thing is general but is really quite niche. There are certainly cases where it makes sense to develop a system around something but you need to consider the full cost/benefit tradeoffs, not just benefits which industry tends to do.