THE FUTURE HAPPENS WHILE YOU’RE DISMISSING IT:
The case of the disappearing secretary (Rowland Manthorpe, Mar 01, 2026, Rowland’s Newsletter)
Not so long ago, the work of secretaries – typing, filing, organising, administrating – was a cornerstone of the economy. By 1984, six years after the map above, there were around 18 million clerical and secretarial workers in the United States, roughly 18 percent of the entire workforce. This was totally normal. In the UK at the same time, between 17 and 18 percent of the workforce was some kind of secretary. In France it was 16 percent. Different economies with different economic policies; all ended up with one in five or six workers employed in clerical work.Why so many? Because every stage of information processing required a human hand. In a mid-century organisation, a manager did not “write” a memo. He dictated it. A secretary took it down in shorthand, then retyped it. Then made copies. Then collated the copies by hand. Then distributed them. Then filed them. And so on and so on. Nothing moved unless someone physically moved it. There was no other way.
Human computers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in the 1950s. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
For this reason, the most sophisticated, information-dense organisations were often the ones with the most administrative staff. As NASA prepared to launch the Apollo missions in the mid-1960s, 15% to 18% of its civil service workforce was classified as “clerical and administrative support”. There were the human “computers” made famous by Hidden Figures, but also technical typists, who typed up mathematical equations. As one of those typists, Estella Gillette, later put it: “The engineers depended on us for everything that wasn’t their job. We were their support system.”This line is often taken as an inspiring motivational quote, but it was a literal description of the situation at the time, because of what today we might call an interface problem. The invention of shorthand and the typewriter in the early twentieth century had made it possible to create accurate records, but senior staff – even engineers at NASA – didn’t interact directly with the administrative machinery of the office. Secretaries and clerks were the unavoidable interface between the manager and the ability to get things done. You spoke to a secretary; they “interfaced” with the shorthand pad and the typewriter. You handed over a paper; they “interfaced” with the filing cabinet. Every kind of activity was organised this way. The secretary was the interface for the diary, a physical object kept only on their desk. (This could be a source of real influence.) They were the human “firewall” or routing system for phone calls. If the manager wanted a coffee, well that was the secretary too. It all went through her.
Then came the personal computer.