Convergence Culture:Investing in IT might all be a waste of time, as far as efficiency is concerned, writes Haydn Shaughnessy

There is, as ever, change afoot. The single biggest driver of growth in the consumer-electronics industry is the display, the screen, the thing we look at. For some time now anything that related to computing was marketed based on its power and speed, which is why we've been busy repeatedly upgrading our PCs these past 20 years. As the computer disappears into other objects, such as television sets, our priorities are changing. The story begins with a tale of remarkable inefficiency.

The IT paradox is a surprisingly overlooked fact of modern life. It says that the economic impact of computing is just about zero. Despite trillions of dollars of investment, at a macro-level economists can identify very little benefit from computing.

When they look at specific sectors, as the consultants McKinsey & Company did when reviewing the banking sector, the results can be even more surprising.

Despite heavy IT investment, and perhaps because of it, banking productivity declined after a new generation of investment in the late 1990s. It is a very counter-intuitive feature of modern culture. For many of us, our lives are now dominated by the PC. The posture we assume for most of the day is defined by the personal-computer keyboard and the mouse. Our focal range is dictated by the screen, our access to visual worlds controlled by browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, and search engines such as Google.

Arguably, our personal productivity has improved with the use of PCs, though if I'm anything like typical then many of us will have over-invested, and that is the source of one inefficiency.

In the past 15 years I've bought 11 computers. But I've also over-invested in the sense of restricting my own physical motion in order to use these machines. Currently, I am learning a new set of social skills, as I try to tidy up my e-mail etiquette, learn how to exhibit some emotion on a blog, and build networks among people I don't know.

The return is the promise of better productivity, although I'm unsure what that really means. There are days when it feels like the computer has led me a merry dance and forced me into never-ending changes, when I could have been more focused and productive with the old Adler typewriter I used as a student.

The idea of power is perhaps what caused lads like me to buy into the computing paradigm. Power was the marquee of computing and power always increased at a predictably high rate. Vroom, vroom. In the world of computer geeks, this is known as Moore's Law. Moore's Law is a shorthand way of saying computer-processing power and speeds double every 18 months. That's why computer-software companies constantly upgrade their software and the features it performs.

A few things are changing. Moore's Law is effectively dead. Without going into the statistical detail, a recent online article at the website geek.com pointed out that processing improvements are slowing down. The microchip might be improving its speeds but not at the historically high rate that made the PC an economic powerhouse.

Another interesting pattern is also emerging. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in the US has over the past three years reported increased interest in purchasing gadgets among women. Though gadget culture might seem a male-dominated world, this is less and less true as the years tick by.

Women are now outspending men in electronics purchases, by $55 (€42) billion to $41 (€31) billion, respectively. The CEA also reports that women influence 90 percent of consumer-electronics purchases.

The reason for these changes is that computing power is migrating from the desktop to applications such as digital camcorders and satellite radio (women want high-quality digital radio in their cars, for example).

Women are also driving the purchase of high-definition television screens, which generally come as part of a home cinema.

Microchips are serving a cultural purpose beyond the office and women are becoming the dominant factor in purchasing products that embody this broader definition of progress. In recognition of changing patterns of consumption, Apple Computer Inc is no longer a computer company; it makes consumer-electronic devices, such as MP3 players and new telephones.

Apple is perhaps the only one of the old computing companies that could have used its feet so deftly to sidestep the computing industry. But the dominant player, Microsoft, is also rebranding itself away from the old IT culture, with its Xbox games console and its support for new home-entertainment systems. For those of us who wanted to do more than look at a screen all day, these changes could have come a whole lot sooner.

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Words in Your Ear

The IT paradox- the argument that investment in IT taken as a whole has made little difference to productivity

Moore's Law- the prediction that computing power doubles every 18 months

MP3- an MP3 player is the generic term for a device that stores and plays music from compressed digital files that are usually downloaded from a computer