...but it seems relevant to what you are discussing here so I'll lay it on ya.

"I recognized that computers were great for navigating spacecraft or solving systems of differential equations, but that the overhead was so severe that it was often easier to do a calculation by hand than to go to the trouble of programming it. I remember that the USS Dewey had three clerks working in it's disbursing office, and one didn't fully count, he was an officer. These men handled all the ship's financial affairs, salaries (in cash, American or foreign currency), savings plans, payroll deductions and tax records, witholdings for families at home, cash advances, and so on. They managed the books and records and also purchased food and fuel in foreign ports. The only mechanical aid they used to take care of the finances of the crew was a ten-key adding machine. Can you imagine a modern company of four hundred employees, supported by less than twenty or thirty people in Data Processing? Not to mention that almost every desk will have a computer on it. With the increased capability comes increased complexity, managing that complexity requires overhead. I have always valued computers, and enjoy working with them, but they are highly overrated as a solution to our problems. It seems that their major attractions to business are the ability to replace skilled technicians and craftsmen with interchangeable low-paid illiterates, and to replace expensive design and manufacturing processes with inferior but cheaper plug-in software solutions. We have done the same thing to the computer that we did to the automobile, and to the television. The machines are not at fault, they are potentially useful devices which could make our existence better, but we are using them for strictly commercial reasons and they are devastating the quality of our lives. This is the technology that could have taken us to the stars, we use it to peddle pornography on the Internet."