Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Low Productivity of Knowledge Workers
Message-ID: <6313@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 26 Sep 89 18:44:51 GMT
References: <9676@venera.isi.edu> <189@crucible.UUCP> <291@voa3.UUCP> <7765@microsoft.UUCP>
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 21

One of the most powerful things a computer can do for an organisation
is improve intra- and even inter- office communications enormously. The
problem is that most offices computerise by getting a bunch of little
personal computers, and maybe a network (though even this is fairly
uncommon). So instead of a bunch of people sitting in offices you have
a bunch of people and computers sitting in offices. Instead of passing
around papers, you pass around floppy disks.

Even with a network, the individual computers are single-tasking... a user
has to back out of whatever they're doing to send electronic mail. And users
have no access to each others' files, either because of network limitations
(the network will only work in server *or* client mode on a given box), or
because of administrative ones (no or inadequate security).

An office is inherently a multi-user environment. Grafting the software
on top of a bunch of single-user systems still leaves every man an island.
-- 
Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-'
"That is not the Usenet tradition, but it's a solidly-entrenched            U
 delusion now." -- brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor)