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A few thoughts about the Slack and productivity question, which @Ranimolla explores so beautifully in this piece. vox.com/recode/2019/5/…
One of the big economic questions of this era is if technology is moving so fast, why has productivity growth slowed down? I’ve written about this a bit here. vox.com/a/new-economy-…
One answer you hear a lot is we’re simply not capturing all the advances in productivity in our measurements. That’s true, but it’s always true. It’s hard to argue there’s more uncaptured economic value in Facebook than in antibiotics, in Uber than in cars.
A more convincing answer is that the kind of technologies advancing fastest right now — technology based around stuff you can do on screens — distract us at least as much they helps us. Dan Nixon made this argument a few years back. bankunderground.co.uk/2017/11/24/is-…
It’s true that Google and Slack and Facebook and YouTube can all help us get amazing things done. But they also distract us from getting amazing things done. And I don’t just mean work things. Human things. Conversations. Time with our family. Quiet.
This might be fine if it seemed to be making us happier, calmer, more satisfied — but it doesn’t. Distraction is different than entertainment. Anxiously checking social feedback may look like connection, but it makes you feel alone.
Slack was supposed to make us more productive. It’s made us less productive. Facebook was supposed to make us more connected. It’s made us less connected. Email was supposed to give us time by letting us work anywhere. Instead it took away our time, as we're always available.
The great problem of our technological age is that we adopt this stuff for good reason, then we’re too addicted or locked in to change course it when it fails. And yes, I am tweeting this, with Slack and Gmail open on my computer.
