A Tech Gift That Keeps On Giving But Which The Data Keep Ignoring.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(PERSPECTIVE)

Byline: GRAHAM TANAKA

Since the 1970s, economists have been predicting that the Digital Revolution would provide enormous benefits to the economy.

Today, consumers are happy to shop online and buy better-performing PCs and cell phones at ever-cheaper prices. Companies are improving productivity by using the Internet and other technology tools that get better every year.

But with lingering underemployment and underutilized manufacturing capacity, many are wondering if technology is actually hurting job creation and the economy.

The information technology-driven New Economy of the 1990s created enormous economic growth and wealth -- and an unemployment rate that reached a record low of 3.6%.

Even after the post-1990s recession and stock-market collapse, we entered 2004 with a 50% larger real economy, a 173% higher stock market and 56% greater real household net worth than at the beginning of the '90s.

Something had to be going right. Was it technology? …