The spectacular, life-altering productivity gains that result from the introduction of profoundly consequential (I just can't bring myself to write "paradigm-shifting") new technologies don't really start showing up until the second generation, economists tell us, because the early years are necessarily spent re-engineering processes and procedures from the ground up in order to fully exploit the opportunities they present. Think the First and Second Industrial Revolutions.
[Note: I'm not an economist and I don't play one in the Blogosphere. If I'm hopelessly confused about the concept above, I hope someone who actually knows what he's talking about will feel free to point out my errors.]
I'm thinking about that stuff today because of this AP article on the broad and deep databases that are only now being developed by the two parties. For them (unlike corporate America), information technology is still in its infancy. And that's just one reason why I suspect that almost everything I think I know about running political campaigns today is going to be utterly meaningless fifteen or twenty years from now.
Posted by Jack O'Toole on October 20, 2003 05:01 AM