Tom Friedman mentioned this essay in his recent talk at MIT. I have long been familiar with the classic work of Thomas Hughes in this area, but I hadn't read Paul David's short essay on the subject, which serves nicely as a concise summary. Many observers of recent trends in the industrialized economies of the West have been perplexed by the conjecture of rapid technological innovation with disappointingly slow gains in measured productivity. Our cultural inheritance assigns high value to (previously scarce) information, predisposing us to try screening whatever becomes available. Yet, screening is costly; while it can contribute to a risk-averse information recipients personal welfare, the growing duplicative allocation of human resources to coping with information overload may displace activities producing commodities. There is likely to be a strong inertial component in the evolution of information-intensive production organizations. There are special difficulties in the commercialization of novel (information) technologies that need to be overcome before the mass of information-users can benefit in their roles as producers.
Are popular memes a waste of our human resources? Aren't we better off to divide and conquer? The Dynamo and the Computer | 
