Saul Albert (2002), ÔUseless UtilitiesÕ, in, Signwave, Auto-Illustrator Users Guide, (first written 2001), Plymouth: i-DAT/Spacex, pp. 89-99. 

Use-value is something Saul Albert discusses in his essay 'Useless Utilities' (2002), opposing the romantic notion that would define art in terms of its lack of utility. This is perhaps a key issue for the understanding of the aesthetic value of software. Albert sees this as 'In some ways, Albert suggests that at worse 'art for art's sake has been replaced by the idea of 'art for technology's sake' with software simply reduced to the role of tool. In much commercial software production there is a crude distinction made where content is seen to be supplied by the 'creatives'. Albert sees artistic software as undermining some of these distinctions as 'not just art' - with use value too. Perhaps this is better described as 'tactical software' as Matthew Fuller suggests to demonstrate added value. For instance, Albert cites Signwave's 'Auto-Illustrator' support list where collaborative and antagonistic attitudes are expressed towards the user, useful and useless responses accordingly. he sees this as extending ambiguities built into the software in general, and perhaps all software.