> "By 2000 - about 50 years after the first computer program - productivity was picking up a bit."
I think what made computers and productivity with computers really take off was down to 3 things:
- The PC and continued drops in price and increases in power.
- Spreadsheets
- Internet
Spreadsheets as simple ledgers? Wonderful, assuming you know about using ranges and how to use $ (or not) as part of reference statements.
Even that level of complexity seems like wizardry to most office drones.
However a spreadsheet is weak compared to a true relational logic engine; a modern database. Databases /have/ had the decades of refinement and are very good tools. Yet for those tools you kind of nail it. Specialists are required to correctly harness that potential.