I kinda look at this on a regular basis. There's a strange inverse curve between computing power, and its effect on organizational efficiency. Back in the 70s a

I kinda look at this on a regular basis. There's a strange inverse curve between computing power, and its effect on organizational efficiency. Back in the 70s a big computer was a clear leverage, today it's a swampy cost point. I think the answers lies at the anthropological layer, average groups don't know how to work very fast especially on non-linear tasks. Application were also designed as dumbed down black boxes that people had to use without getting smarter themselves. Computing also became a trend, lots of reliable, lean, scriptable as400 or win3 era apps were replaced by webapps, with less features (but more portable and cuter to look at). The only way this improved was by moore's law, every N years users got stronger machines that managed to make a bit of the bloat faster. As an example I like to tell that at a courthouse, when network failed and printers couldn't print, the productivity doubled. Filling simple templates was done faster by hand by simply chatting with users and writing things down as they come instead of asking for data, walking to your desk, waiting for the apps, typing data (in triplicate some times), waiting for the server to maybe generate the document, document that may still not have the correct data, then print it, then review it with the user. Also, comfort breeds stupidity..