[1 (go back)] Uchitelle, L. Measuring productivity in the 90s, The New York Times, August 2, 1997. The Economist, August 9, 1997 echoed this message in an editorial that much of the current market exuberance is due to "...delightful notion that productivity ...is in the throes of a secular rise, thanks to the spread of information technology...". However, there is one banker, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who states that "...there's not a shred of credible evidence in the macro-economi that supports the notion of a meaningful improvement in America's productivity." See Roach, S.S., The Worker Backlash, The New York Times, August 24, 1997.

[2 (go back)] Uchitelle, L., What Goes Up Must Usually, Well, Stop Going Up, The New York Times, August 10, 1997 quotes David Wyss "People are looking for an easy explanation of why profits are doing well." One explanation has been summoned:"...the main characteristic of this new era is rising productivity. The new technologies, particularly computers and telecommunications are making workers more productive."

[3 (go back)] Hoffman, T., Feds link IT, productivity but hard evidence is lacking, Computerworld, August 25, 1997.

[4 (go back)] McNamee, M., The Productivity Boom is Still a Mystery, Business Week, August 10, 1997. Melloan, G., Where Is the Information Technology Payoff, The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1997 echoes the identical view, adding that "...it could be that the gains some businesses are making with computers are being offset by higher costs elsewhere inflicted by government red tape." I have documented support for the government's waste in Chapter 14 (Workload without Payoff) in The Squandered Computer.

[5 (go back)] The Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted in The New York Times, August 2, 1997.

[6 (go back)] In 1996 this group had revenues of 1,898 billion dollars, or 43 percent of the total revenues of the 2,215 publicly reported US industrials.

[7 (go back)] Using the "least squares" approximation method.

[8 (go back)] In 1996 this group had revenues of 207 billion dollars, or 60 percent of the total revenues of the 189 publicly reported US banking firms.

[9 (go back)] I.T. budgets from Leaders in I.T.Excellence, CIO Magazine, August 1997.

[10 (go back)] A number of consulting business have a flourishing business in publishing such numbers.

[11 (go back)] The identical observation applies to every other industrial sector I have studied so far, and I have looked at more than fifty.

[12 (go back)] The most vocal proponent of this points of view is Stephen S. Roach, chief econ

[13 (go back)] Bernstein, A., Sharing Prosperity, Business Week, September 1, 1997. Most of the cited data come from the Census Bureau, US Department of Commerce.

[14 (go back)] The statistical characteristics of queuing theory will dictate that. Network connectivity restricted to a geographical site heightens local workload peaks. I have seen corporate networks with less than two percent capacity utilization of the average workload. This disparity makes it necessary for organizations to install large multiples of average capacity thoughout the network to satisfy statistically rare occurences. A sufficiently diversified computing utility can take care of demands for high availability with only a fraction of assets in place.