In Praise of Inefficiency

Sometimes you just want to go analog: hold a book in your hands and fold back the pages; smush paint around real paper, pushing its thick viscous texture; talk face to face and get subliminal reactions. In the business world, there is such a hyperventilation about going digital and using big data that that’s all I ever see in news article (granted I did ask for it). Going digital is all about speed and efficiency – getting things done faster and more accurately.

But sometimes going digital can be inefficient.

That’s the premise of the latest book I’m reading – The Efficiency Paradox – What Big Data Can’t Do by Edward Tenner. The author has lots of delicious examples where digitalization has brought inefficiencies in unexpected ways and has brought up instances where analog just might give you better results.

Take the web for example which is pretty much the topic of chapter 2. When the web first came on, it was touted as a way for the average person to get past the gatekeeper and promote his or her own message to the world. You can’t get in the door of the publishing industry? Then go blog. Galleries won’t consider your photos or paintings? Go Instagram. Have an urge to create visual stories but have no connection to the film industry. Here comes YouTube. Got an opinion? Go Twittering. Have comedic talents and need a bigger stage? Let’s try Facebook.

So, the web enabled anybody to communicate to the world without the gatekeepers stopping them.

The bad? The web enabled anybody to communicate to the world without the gatekeepers stopping them. That means anybody, including those peddling quack ideas, hate messages, mean memes, and fake news (and I’m not talking about mainstream news channels).

So, there’s the good and there’s the bad. Originally, the web had brought efficiency in searching for information because you could just Google it without going to the library or hauling out the Britannica encyclopedia. But now, you have to do some real research if you want to determine what is real and what is fake. So inefficiency has crept in because we no longer have people screening out disreputable facts. You have to work harder for it.

Education is another area where maybe technology may not be the answer. Personally, I think if you want to educate and train people, especially little kids, you need a human being to guide you, to encourage you, to show the way. You can use technology as an aid but you won’t ever be able to get rid of the human being. Teaching is essentially a human endeavor and therefore basically an inefficient process. Did you know that handwriting your lecture notes rather than typing in the lecture word for word in your laptop helps you learn better? That might be because writing what you hear down on paper forces you to think about what is the essential point and rephrase it into your own words because you don’t have time to handwrite out word for word the lecture.

Then there’s the impact on scientific research with weak scientific conclusions…doctors burdened with entering data into medical systems…stress from knowing your genetic health outcome…people dying from faulty GPS systems…employers tracking you…