Email and Slack Have Locked Us in a Productivity Paradox

In 1982, Time magazine skipped its annual tradition of naming a "Man of the Year" to instead crown the personal computer as the "Machine of the Year." The Apple II had been released only a half-decade earlier, and the subsequent introduction of the VisiCalc spreadsheet software in 1979 seemingly all at once convinced the managerial class about the business potential of computers. Soon, IBM released its own PC, which went on to become both widely copied and wildly popular. The journalist who wrote the Time feature noted in his article that he had typed his contribution on a typewriter. By the next year, their newsroom switched to word processors.