Has technology made businesses more intelligent? That may be an odd question to ask at this point, in that businesses have spent what I estimate at $389 skillion on IT over the past 10 years. We used that investment to create twice as much information in 2002 as we created in 1999, according to University of California researchers, and in 2002 generated enough new information per person to fill a stack of books 30 feet high. That's equal to the length of two new Harry Potter titles, or the work I just finished, "The Misery of Chicago Cubs Fans, Vol. 1."

The result of this investment is that businesses have the capacity to know a lot more, in theory. Companies can measure virtually everything they do -- and many fall prey to doing just that. (If hunters took the same approach, they would shoot everything in sight.)

Some organizations use technology to come up with things like "cost per sale per minute per employee as a percentage of nondiscretionary overhead in Muncie." Others are more low-tech in their information gathering. I heard of one CEO who decided that his employees lacked commitment and that he would measure it by counting the number of cars in the company parking lot on weekends. Employees quickly learned they would succeed or fail based on how many family and friends they could get to park their cars up at the office before carpooling to the game.

Companies gather information about customers, too, and I'm not sure they handle that any better. A pizza delivery place I call asks for my phone number, and then asks if I want the same kind of pizza I ordered last time -- the deep-dish onion with hand-tossed hog jowls and extra caulking. If they had caller ID, they wouldn't even have to ask for my number, and if they had good predictive software, they could call me and ask if I was ready for another hot, steaming meal delivered to my door in less than nine minutes.

My phone company has the capacity to tell me whom I called, when, and for how long. It knows where I go on the Internet. It knows my checking account number so that it can automatically pay itself, even though it thinks my name is "Dannel." Yet the phone company called me once to ask me for -- get this -- my phone number. I thought, Is this a trick question? Don't they realize they've just called me at the number they're now asking me for? Do they suspect I've killed the person who formerly had this number, have assumed his personality, and am living now in his house?

If your phone company ever calls you and asks for your number, try this: Tell them to call directory assistance.

But some companies truly are smarter because of technology. Here, I'm thinking of those that offer products over the Internet, and then make you do all the work to order them. When I fill out my own order, I rarely misspell my name and always remember my address. Companies see fewer errors whenever their own employees have nothing to do with anything. And customers tend to order more stuff when they're unassisted by cheery sales associates.

Then again, some companies aren't very bright about integrating the human side of their business with the technological side. You may be surprised to know that a major book retailer will charge you $20 if you buy a book online, but $25 if you're dumb enough to go into one of their stores. I once asked a clerk at one of their stores why this was. "Aren't you telling me it's dumb for me or anyone else ever to buy anything here when we can save money buying it from your Web site?" I inquired. "I just work here," he carefully explained, giving me hope that someday, technology might address that problem.

Anyway, being kind of dumb myself, I bought a book from him, and as I left, he added that important human touch that technology lacks. He said, "Thank you, Mr. Dannel."

Dan Danbom writes humor for a number of publications. His latest book is "Humor Meets Your Workforce: Make Laughter One of Your Organization's Goals."