For example, personal and business Internet sites have proliferated at an astounding rate and a wide variety of tasks that used to require person-to-person contact, such as making airline and other travel reservations and choosing and ordering merchandise, can now be done via the Web.
Search engines have cut the time needed to track down a person or an item to a fraction of the amount previously required, clearly raising productivity. Improved communication and information flow are only part of the story; increases in computing power also allow workers to complete a variety of tasks more quickly.