Jonathan Rauch, that introvert, writing in 2001 for the Atlantic about old and new economies becoming acquainted:

“Although at this point no one can prove anything, a story that seems plausible to many economists and business executives goes like this: In the 1980s Old Economy businesses tended to waste much of what they spent on computers and software. Companies in traditional industries would drop a PC on every desk and declare themselves computerized; they would buy spreadsheet programs and word-processing software and networking equipment that as often as not just substituted new frustrations for old ones. This began to change, however, as software and hardware grew in power, and as companies began learning how to use them not just as conveniences or crutches but to change the nature of the job. At first the impact, like a misty drizzle, was too small to show up in the national economic statistics. However, each innovation enabled other innovations, none of them revolutionary but all of them combining in an accelerating cascade. By the second half of the 1990s the aggregate effect on productivity became large enough to register in the national accounts, and the line between the New Economy and the Old Economy began to blur. That is the story of the New Old Economy.”