According to a report by Basex Inc. the pressure put on us by technology to respond immediately to emails, text messages, and IMs cost the US economy around $650 billion in 2006. They say that the human brain is not hardwired for paying attention to several things at once or for handling constant interruptions, and due to this there is lost productivity. Sounds nutty to me. Email, text-messaging, and IM'ing save tremendous amounts of time and travel. For a businessman these tools save tremendous amounts of money. Having questions answered in a split second brings much more efficiency to a business, and to the world.

Is it better if I go grocery shopping and I get an SMS message to pick up another gallon of milk, or would these researchers say I should go home and then have my wife tell me to go out again and pick up the milk? That doesn't sound too efficient, does it? I was literally on a conference call, that just ended, which took much longer than expected. Lucky for me, I was on mute the whole time, and via email, I was able to take care of about 45 minutes worth of work, all while on the call. That doesn't sound to me like a cost to society.

The whole point of technology is to free us up to be more efficient, to have more time to do other things. How can this possibly cost society $650 billion.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer has no position in any stock mentioned as of 12/27/07