Self service

In reading Michael Saine’s column in the August DDJ today he talks about Marshall McLuhan’s forecast that “The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself’.”  Quite timely since I was talking with one of the other project managers yesterday who was typing up a storm on a document when I walked by.  I remarked to him that I thought that it was quite interesting that what we generally spend our days doing used to be called “secretarial work.”  He was not altogether amused; but we’re all living in the age of self-service through technology.