No, sorry I should have elaborated because while this is a really familiar case to people who study economics it may not be familiar to everyone. People spent a fortune on computers, and increasing amounts. To the point of the quote it wasn't clear that it was improving productivity. It took time and a lot of investment for the transformation of work to happen.
A similar historical thing is when factories went from steam engines to electricity. Steam factories had one big engine connected mechanically to many tools and conveniences in the factory. So they replace the one big steam engine with an electric motor. Really not much better. It took time for them to realize they wire the factory and have each device have its own electric motor. That was more efficient and more flexible. Technology that changes how you work takes a long time to adopt.
“The dot-com boom left all this fibre that powered the next 20 years of Internet growth” is the common example put forward, and I always wonder what amazing societal advancement we got with all those leftover tulip bulbs in the 1600s.
> Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.
Some skeptic was wrong in the past, therefore we should disbelieve every skeptic, forever.
That's the argument, right?