Page 238 - The Drucker Lectures

On Globalization [ 219

become captives of their computer. The computer is fascinating,
but let me say it is fascinating for mental age 5. That’s probably
the age at which people are best on these computers.
All it gives most of you are inside data, accounting data in
infinite detail. And we cannot put outside data on the computer
because they are not in computer-useable form. To put things on
the computer, they have to be quantifiable. But very little infor-
mation about the outside is in that form, and so the computer
people dismiss it as being anecdotal. How do you quantify what
this Chinese friend of mine told me when he said that the people
in Shanghai and Beijing now consider owning an automobile a
necessity? You can’t quantify it, but it tells you more about China
than all the Chinese statistics. It tells you that you have a totally
different country. It’s a poor country now, but it’s no longer an
underdeveloped country. It’s a fundamental difference. You can’t
quantify it, but spend 10 minutes in either city and you’ll know
the difference. And if you only look at your computer data, you’ll
never find out.

From a lecture delivered at Claremont Graduate University.