Today in 1971, Time magazine reviewed the state of the computer industry in “A Growth Industry Grows Up.”
From the article:
For the past three years, one-tenth of new U.S. investment in plant and equipment has gone into computers, enough to make electronic data processing the nation’s fastest-growing major industry… Computer technology has raced ahead of the ability of many customers to make good use of it. Not long ago, the Research Institute of America found that only half of 2,500 companies questioned felt that their present machines were paying for themselves in increased efficiency… For all the change that it has already wrought, the computer has barely begun to transform the methods of business and very probably the character of civilization.
Also in 1971, Arthur R. Miller wrote in The Assault on Privacy:
The new information technologies seem to have given birth to a new social virus – "data mania." Its symptoms are shortness of breath and heart palpitations when contemplating a new computer application, a feeling of possessiveness about information and a deep resentment toward those who won’t yield it, a delusion that all information handlers can walk on water, and a highly advanced case of astigmatism that prevents the affected victim from perceiving anything but the intrinsic value of data.