Volume 19–4 (Low Res).pdf

Ruled By
Tools
New York Times
columnist Russell Baker
ponders computers, junk mail, and the
"silliness of progress"
fter using my powerful word processor
to write a letter to a friend, I
printed it on my state-of-the-art
laser printer. What a professional
look it had! It didn't look like a letter
at all. It looked like a piece of junk mail.
Every day brings a dozen documents that
look exactly like this letter. Every day they flutter
into my trash can unread. One knows their
messages too well:
An astounding new shampoo is available.
An officeholder praises his own achievements.
A sales pitch disguised as a lottery advises
recipient to steel himself for the arrival of an
armored truck full of dollars. A friend of the
President says a contribution of $10,000 is
imperative though $25 will not be sneered at.
My beautifully printed letter showed me
caught in the American comedy about the silliness
of progress. Just look at this letter: Writing
it required several thousand dollars' worth
of electronic machinery, not to mention a
supply of electricity provided by vast corporations
whose hot wiry tentacles stretched across
thousands of miles.
With all these resources, what emerged?
A letter that looked so like junk mail that my
friend would probably toss it away unread.
What's more, it was a poorly written letter—not
a graceful phrase in it, too much stiffness in the
prose joints, and twice as long as it needed to be.
Such gassiness is characteristic of writing
done on computers. Computers make the physical
toil of writing so negligible that the writer
can write on forever, and often does, as I am
currently doing at this very particular and precious
point in time, a.k.a. now. Many books
only 290 pages routinely wheeze on nowadays
to 800, 900, 999.
My second-rate letter with the junk-mail look
is a typical child of progress. With a goose quill,
Thomas Jefferson could have written a letter at a
fraction of the cost. It would have looked like
the work of a human being, and it would have
been a better letter than mine.
It would have been better not only because
Jefferson had the more interesting mind, but
also because writing with goose-feathers is such
messy work that a writer has to put his mind
in order before starting. With a computer, he
merely flips a switch, then lets his brain
mosey around in the fog on the chance it may
bump into an idea.
My second-rate letter produced at great
expense reminds me of those silly men who
drive around with one hand on the steering
wheel and the other holding a telephone. Don't
they realize the horror of living in a world
where there is no haven anywhere, even in the
sweet, sensuous privacy of your automobile,
from the accursed telephone?
Apparently not. The high cost of car telephones
suggests that people who have them
will pay big money to avoid being alone
with themselves. Often they are so desperate
to experience communication that they call
talk-radio shows, phoning in from the highway
to abuse Congressmen or explain what's
wrong with the hometown baseball team.
The plight of the modern American is comic,
not tragic as the overwrought quality of the
daily news report would have us believe. The
guy using $3000 worth of machinery to write
a pal a letter that will look like a piece of junk
mail is part of the national comedy. So is the
man driving down the highway, phone in hand,
telling Radio World what's on his mind.
Both these people have the same problem.
Technological genius has provided them with
wonderful machinery which, used discretely,
will bless their lives. -Yet they let the machinery
use them, and so become its victims, one
depriving himself of peace of mind by letting
the telephone get out of control, the other turning
friendly letters into junk-mail facsimiles
simply because electronics makes it possible.
The criticism often made of progress is that it
makes life ever more complicated, ever more
stressful and ever more demanding. All true, but
its blessings are also considerable, or would
be if we could stop being progress' servants and
make progress start serving us. At present, alas,
we are in the comic position of being tools. And
we yearn to be tragic, not comic. Prince Hamlet,
not Falstaff.
Copyright 1992 by The New York Times
Company. Reprinted by permission.
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