(MONEY Magazine) – Robert Gordon, a professor of social sciences at Northwestern University, recently penned a study that questions whether the Internet deserves a place alongside the great innovations of the Industrial Revolution--electricity, internal-combustion engines and indoor plumbing, to name a few. As these quotations suggest, his findings are slightly at odds with today's conventional wisdom.

--JEFF NASH

ON THE SUBJECT OF

Prosperity

GORDON SAYS...

"Internet surfing may be fun, but it represents a far smaller increment in the standard of living than achieved by the extension of day into night achieved by electric light..."

WHILE OTHERS ARGUE...

"I believe the computer and the Internet give us a chance to move more people out of poverty more quickly than at any time in all of human history." --President Clinton, at a gathering of economists and market strategists

[ON THE SUBJECT OF]

Productivity

[GORDON SAYS...]

"Outside of durable manufacturing, the New Economy has been remarkably unfruitful as a creator of productivity growth."

[WHILE OTHERS ARGUE...]

A B-to-B-fueled Internet can "have as profound an impact on the economy as the Industrial Revolution."--Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget

[ON THE SUBJECT OF]

Quality of life

[GORDON SAYS...]

"Even derivatives of electricity like the air conditioner are probably more valued by the consumer, at least in the southern half of the United States, than the invention of the Internet..."

[WHILE OTHERS ARGUE...]

"[The Internet is] the most ennobling technology ever invented on the face of the planet." --Christos Cotsakos, chief executive of online broker E-Trade, at the Summit in Silicon Valley, a panel discussion of technology executives moderated by Tom Brokaw

[ON THE SUBJECT OF]

Impact on the future

[GORDON SAYS...]

"The speed at which diminishing returns have taken hold makes it likely that the greatest benefits of computers lie a decade or more in the past, not in the future."

[WHILE OTHERS ARGUE...]

"I do think this is like the Cambrian era 550 million years ago, when multicelled life first sprang on to the scene from single-celled life....That's what's happening now with the Internet." --Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos