At the end of the 19th century, railroads and electric motors were expected to transform America, making a young industrial economy far more productive than any seen before. And they did. At the end of the 20th century, computers were supposed to perform the same miracle.
Computers do wonderful things.
By that standard, they have been a disappointment. The issue is productivity. Those who look to computers for economic miracles, and there are many, insist that measuring their contribution only in dollars misses the less tangible improvement in quality that computers have made possible. But quality is often in the eyes of the beholders rather than in their wallets. And the more output from each of the nation's workers, the greater the national wealth.