We call this progress?
Computers in the academic workplace revisited

By David Ainsworth 

When I started working in academia 30 years ago, there were no computers in the workplace. By the time I retired, computers had made the academic workplace remarkably different, and I have mixed feelings as to their benefit. While computers have been of tremendous benefit in the academic world as instruments for research and data management, I’m not so sure this is true for computers used primarily as word processors.

Like many other faculty, I used computers exclusively for word processing, generating course syllabi, class handouts, research papers and general correspondence. Although this may seem like heresy, on balance I feel that the university and I would have been better off if I had never used a computer.

When I started working, I shared with three colleagues a secretary, Mrs. Burkhardt. She would do the typing and I would do the proofreading. When I was given a computer, I did the typing and Mrs. Burkhardt did the proofreading, which did not strike me as progress. Eventually they got rid of Mrs. Burkhardt and I did the typing and nobody did the proofreading. Computers have spell check and grammar check, but they do not have “common sense” check. I once gave Mrs. Burkhardt my resignation letter to type. She refused, and told me to go home and talk it over with my wife. A computer would not do that, or remind you to copy so-and-so or include such-and-such.

After Mrs. Burkhardt left, not only did I do the typing, but I also did the envelopes and stuffed them, living in dread of using Dr. White’s salutation in Dr. Black’s letter and putting it in Dr. Green’s envelope. I spent literally days just doing correspondence. My computer did not increase my own efficiency. Even in terms of economics I don’t think the university was much better off by equipping us with computers for word processing. Certainly we saved the salaries of the Mrs. Burkhardts, but we ended up with a whole building of computer technical support people at substantially higher salaries.

It has also been my experience that computers as word processors have not substantially improved the quality of writing, either my own or that of the students. What they have done is massively increase the quantity of words moved around, with more being written but not much more being said.

The one good feature of computers has been e-mail. It has made interscholastic communication incredibly more effective. But even e-mail has some drawbacks. I noticed that colleagues whose offices were around the corner had taken to e-mailing each other.

E-mail is not just a way of communicating but is a very effective documentation of communications—“Yes, I did ask so-and-so to do such-and-such, and I have the e-mail to prove it”—and thus it has a rather sinister potential. My boss, whose office was next door, would e-mail me to come and see him. Needless to say, being too busy stuffing envelopes to check my e-mail, I often did not get the message.

Another drawback of e-mail is that it is relentless. I knew colleagues who would come back from a three-day conference to be greeted by more than 100 e-mail messages. I knew others who took their laptops on vacation so they could keep up with their e-mail. If one is not careful, e-mail can be like weeds in a lake. Their tendrils will grab you and pull you under. E-mail is becoming one of the bigger stressors in professional life, and it takes almost a brutal effort to make it work for you rather than against you.

Of course, we can’t turn back the clock. Computers are here to stay, and faculty and administrators are becoming their own managers. Five-thumbed faculty like me will have to stumble on until voice-recognition technology becomes of sufficient maturity that they can talk into a microphone and the words will appear on the screen. In effect, they’ll be back to the old days when we used Dictaphones. Only this time, there’ll be no Mrs. Burkhardt to keep them honest.

David Ainsworth is recently retired from Governors State University in Illinois, where he was coordinator of instructional development and a member of University Professionals of Illinois/IFT/AFT.