The Tyranny of Computers:
Has Anything Changed?

July 19, 2007
From Clare Ultimo:
I wrote the letter below eleven years ago, when everyone in the design profession was beginning to adjust to what we now call “digital technology.” My studio was nine years old. We were print designers, growing and doing well, and I was soon to become a board member of AIGA/NY, so I was also active in my profession. Up to 1996, we had been working quite skillfully with our hands, employing a host of sister professions outside the studio with our production work…folks like typesetters, color separators and photostat houses depended on businesses like ours for income. This machine—the computer—intruded on our process. Our creative community was coming apart at the seams while, one by one, the services these folks provided for us became unnecessary and closed down. During all this, I had a payroll to meet and clients to maintain. It was a tricky thing and it gave me an ulcer once the dust settled.

In 1996 it was very unfashionable to complain about the computer. My peers kept downplaying the role of this machine in our lives with the mantra “remember it’s only a tool.” I felt everyone was simply afraid to question anything for fear of sounding like a Luddite, or being seen as an enemy of progress. To be a designer meant you were on to the latest thing, ahead of everyone else, “leading the fold” so to speak. Talking about the difficulties that everyone encountered was a big secret and I hated it. That’s why the article in CA that I refer to in my letter was so important to me; why I took the time to respond to it. I was not surprised that my letter was not published; advertisers would not be comfortable with such complaints.

In many ways, my feelings haven’t changed from the time I wrote this letter. What has changed is that many of my astute and “visionary” friends now feel the way I did so long ago…frustrated at being forced into the constant stream of updating expensive software and techniques for doing the same thing they did before…only differently. But, like many others, I have come to love my oppressor—a choiceless act, but nonetheless one that I am now very comfortable with. It’s impossible to live (and work!) without a Mac on my desk.

I do feel the “cowboy/frontier” analogy I make in this letter still holds today. It seems fair to say that the technology came onto our territory with bigger weapons and we had no choice but to submit.


Written by Clare Ultimo to
Communication Arts Magazine
July 17, 1996

To the editor,
I write letters like this because when I’m not actually running a design studio, I’m too busy dealing with problems not unlike the ones Judy Kirpich wrote about in the last issue of CA. Her honesty has really encouraged me to take the time to respond.

Kirpich’s article, “Digital Angst,” was a long time in coming. Some of us have felt like this for a while but were basically silenced by the design community since it’s enslavement to Apple, Adobe, Quark, Macromind, Netscape, etc. etc. Designers always want to sound like they are one step ahead of their “brothers and sisters,” so any kind of public complaint against the tyranny of the computer would sound parochial. It would mean you’re just not doing it right. It would also must mean you may not know what you’re doing.

But many, many design firms suffer the fate that Judy describes so openly, in a variety of ways and for almost countless reasons. They make jokes about it, but few would be honest enough to even consider what the computer has done to hurt design and designers. In different ways, with different RAM digits, we’re all stuck on the same monitor screen. And it is often letting us know that there is a bad F Line instruction during the most inopportune time.

For years now I’ve noticed inconsistencies and carelessness that have been passed along to me in the name of the future—and I’ve complained in the face of ridicule to whoever would listen. Three years ago, my very reputable $135.00 an hour computer consulting firm told me I was alone. “No one else has these problems, Clare. I don't know what to tell you….” After that, I found another very reputable computer consulting firm but very little changed except my attitude. I have had to develop a sense of humor about this stuff. Most of it came from realizing that no one else really knows what they’re doing either, and there for the grace of God go the computer geeks and all my bragging designer friends: “Do you have the latest Neuron Freezo drive, Clare? This handy gadget will take pictures of you while you’re on the john and send them into space on a timer, scanning at 10 billion dots per inch in the meantime….” Oh joy. What, am I asleep at the wheel again?

Unfortunately, I don’t see any way out of it if you want to do this design thing. We shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking this is new, either. We’re reliving a part of American history: it’s the Wild West no matter where you set up your Mac. I don’t think we’re exactly the cowboys yet but the cowboys are certainly forging the new frontier and WE ARE IT. They’ve certainly struck gold, but we keep getting thrown off our land. If you want to survive, you get on a horse (or in our case, a desktop) and learn their cowboy ways. And them guys don’t think about tomorrow…they are, after all, the pioneers!!!

I suppose it’s too late to start smashing machines like the Luddites did at the start of the industrial revolution in England — the STUPID DOLTS who went into the first textile mills in England and literally smashed the new models. Of course, we welcome the latest machines now (thanks to “Wired”), but I imagine the Luddites knew something we don’t even care about anymore. As communities and families of craftspeople their “handmade” days had to change—for something better, we’re told. In this case, something better became Punk Rock and unemployment for thousands of young people in England many years later. A real improvement on the pitiful simple human condition, wouldn’t you say?

Let’s face it, our lives didn’t improve... they changed. The equation went like this: Faster/More Control = Computers/Virtual World = Big Improvement. But the first part was always a half-truth, created by the magnificence of marketing and the excitement of the new. Isn’t it just that our time is cut up differently? Sorry, a complicated project is still a complicated project; you don’t save much in the time department in the long run. We’ve just exchanged the ancient dangers of inhaling rubber cement for the current dangers of staring at a brightly lit monitor for hours at a time and getting carpal tunnel and the printer expects us to do color seps…. But it’s much faster now. Let’s not mistake “better” for “different.”

In a recent article published in the AIGA journal, Milton Glaser wrote that it is time we realized that we have lost the war. He was talking in a more general way about the always-questionable marriage between design and commerce, but I feel that the computer is an important part of the struggle. He mentioned something about our energy being better used to find a new battle. I’m pretty battle-scarred myself, but I wouldn’t mind getting behind some real dialogue about the digital scene that isn’t sanctioned by Adobe Systems. Maybe if we to tell the truth and stop trying to impress one another, we can do a little something to actually improve the situation.

I’d like to suggest that CA really forge a frontier and begin a regular “Digital Angst” column. Not a gripe and problem column, but an exchange of ideas, experiences and opinion that would be a little more penetrating than the latest software review or another “How I Did This Weird Effect.” We already have enough of that. Maybe it will help more people to become less intimidated by this nonsense, more intelligent in their responses and possibly, even more instrumental in the making of the next ten years of design. We should even invite “outsiders”" like printers, separators, clients, computer consultants and all the people the computer has put out of business. It might be encouraging. At any rate, it would be more interesting than the immense amount of drivel that most of us don't really read anyway.

Thank you CA for publishing Judy’s moan for sanity. You don’t even have to handcuff me. I'll go quietly back to my computer now.

—Clare Ultimo
—Ultimo Inc.

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