Matthew Fuller (2003), 'It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter', in Behind the Blip: essays on the Culture of Software, New York: Autonomedia, pp.137-165.


Future patterns of work are made explicit in the availability and prevalence of 'Microsoft Office' in workplaces and universities across the world. In a business-like manner, it prescribes and universalises certain activities and even use of language as a blatantly imperialistic gesture (a neglected project comes to mind where none of the functions of a Word-like word-processing program work at all, and whatever key you press Mein Kampf begins to type). It is as if the user is designed as part of the package, or even more so disappear into it; that the 'disappearance of the worker is best achieved by the direct subsumption of all their potentiality within the apparatus of work' (Fuller, 2003: 139). This is designed predetermine work and to deny the user a sense of autonomy. The user simply becomes one of the objects of its object-orientated program, and this is hidden from the user by the user-(un)friendly graphical interface.  

In 'It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter,' Matthew Fuller tries to deconstruct one aspect of this office package, 'Microsoft Word', its word-processing program, by literally taking it apart (2003; although first written to accompany the installation 'A Song for Occupations' at the Lux gallery, London, in 2000). He is suggesting an imperative to 'make language, to cut the word up, open, and into process' (2003: 163). [I am currently typing these notes using Word to get a feeling for the critique. It is supplied by my university as standard issue as part of a suite of Microsoft products.] He begins by saying: 'All word-processing programs exist in part at the threshold between the public world of the document and those of the user, the writing and what lies behind it' (2003: 138). 'Word' is intentionally over-complicated given what it sets out to facilitate, providing a surplus of functionality and of course surplus value for Microsoft (not least in the way it necessarily interfaces with other Microsoft products).

Of interest to Fuller is the array of programmed functions. The various forms of 'help' available, exemplified by the Disney-like Office assistant equipped with limited artificial intelligence to confront the user's stupidity. There are also a range of templates available too such as 'CV wizard', 'Envelope Wizard' and 'Letter Wizard' (and thus the title of the essay) but no Suicide Note Wizard (2003: 148; something later attended to Olga Goruninova's (or was it Rachel Baker?) 'I See You Are Writing a Suicide Note'). The underlying grammar conforms to the standardised form of proprietary software with an emphasis on tasks to be completed, such that as the user learns the language, 'the language installs the user into the system' (Fuller quoting Heim, 2003: 148). And as a result, and because of the overall context of Office: 'digital writing is not simply subsumed within an uninterrupted envelope for accessing various medial formations, but articulated, variegated, and positioned by the [...] culture of doing business.' (2003: 150) The preferences of the program are particularly evident in 'autocorrect' and its automated spelling and grammatical corrections reflected the hegemonic dominance of the English language as the globalised language of business, what Fuller calls the 'material-semiotic infrastructure of business' (2003: 160).

The lesson to be learned for Fuller, in opposition to the authoritarian teachings of Microsoft, is that software might be produced that allows for 'autonomous work' in the sense that AndrŽ Gorz suggests (2003: 161; citing AndrŽ Gorz, 1985, Paths to Paradise - on the Liberation from Work), that allows for escape from the codifications and commodifications of Word. He insists that 'Culture is an engineering problem' (2003: 162), such as the use of viable alternatives such as open source software. The difficulty is when 'free software is too content with simply reverse-engineering or mimicking the cramped sensoriums of proprietary software, Copying Microspoft Word feature-by-feature and opening up its source code is not freedom. Mimesis is misery' (2003: 162). If the user is fully written into open source software so much the better for society.