The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)
I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software.Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming).There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers.But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque reality where the only programs they have access to don't do what they want, and so their work becomes "working around the bad program."I helped a lady on Friday at a midsized bank whose job it was to take a set of dates in an Excel file, search each one individually into an internal search tool, then Ctrl+f the result report and verify that every code listed in the original document exists in the report.For 100+ entries.Every month.In 2023.What the fuck are we doing as a society, that this lady, with a machine that could compute the above in a fraction of a second, has to spend a decent chunk of her work time doing this?Example specifically chosen because I've seen innumerable similar "internal development will never work on this, because it's too small of an impact" issues at every company.Computers should work for us. All of us. Not the other way around.