[rightbyte]

I mean, obviously I don't actually know if my "theory" is valid or not. I did not work at that time.

My feeling is just that there is no order anymore.

When I visited my dad (DoD bureaucrat) or mum (dentist) as a child there were so much order with secretaries and file cabinet rooms.

The cost of sending letters or filing documents worked as a filter I guess. No data format was ever invalid. Just put the paper in the folder. There was no "computer says no" for the clerks. Also, there was a limit in how convuluted processes you can practically have without computer programs.

The main thing was probably that you had to have secretaries keeping order. They are gone now.

I have never experienced that order where I have worked (I am 34). But I see it in remaints of the late 90s early 00s documentation and old file cabinets for prior projects.

Nowadays everything just disappear in some network folder black hole and employee attrition.

[lmm]

Jevons Paradox definitely applies - the cheaper something is the more you spend on it. There's no will to prune unnecessarily complex processes and reporting when you can just automate them. But not to the extent of it actually becoming a negative; you forget how much all those clerks and secretaries used to cost.