My guess is that his secretary still uses emails even if he's not. So basically he has just transfered his communication tasks to another person and somehow it is ok for him to enslave a person for jobs he doesn't want to do since he's a much more "important" human being. This is pure arrogance.
I think I will start to question what I learned from this guy. Maybe I give up on latex, not that there is a better alternative.
"The End of An Era
On September 30, members of Stanford's Computer Science Department gathered to bid farewell to Phyllis Astrid Benson Winkler, on the occasion of her retirement after 32 years of service. During those years she was one of the key reasons for our department's successes; thus she indirectly had a substantial influence on the progress of computer science as a whole. We appreciated her intelligence, her efficiency, her world-class expertise at producing beautiful technical documents, her team spirit, her willingness to go the extra mile, and her contagious laughter.
I was fortunate to have had Phyllis as my secretary and essential co-pilot during the past 28 years; without her I could not have accomplished nearly as much. She typed more than 200 of my papers, most of which required several rounds of revisions. She buffered all of my mail and telephone messages. She administered the editorial work of more than a dozen technical journals, and helped out with numerous research projects. She made online indexes of all the correspondence in our files. She did all of the initial keyboarding for the new editions of The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1 and 3 (see below) --- amounting to more than 1500 printed pages of what printers used to call ``penalty copy'' because it is so hard to do. And so on and so on; what a team we made! And she was simultaneously also serving as secretary for several other faculty members.
When I originally wrote the TeX typesetting system, I intended it to be a tool just for Phyllis and me, but mostly for Phyllis. Soon other people decided to use it too, but Phyllis's influence on the TeX project has nevertheless been enormous. One of the events at her retirement party was the reading of a resolution recently passed by the board of directors of the TeX Users Group, expressing their appreciation for all of her contributions during the past 20 years. I'm sure people all over the world are sad that they will no longer be communicating with her at Stanford, yet wishing her happiness as she changes to a life of voluntary community service.
I can't express in words the enormous debt of gratitude I feel, but I have tried to do that in part by dedicating the book Literate Programming to her. I certainly wish her a long and productive life in retirement."
Also note that, while you can see these kinds of notes lying around, there are also many places these don't exists at all. If I were to know Donald Knuth from his wikipedia article, I would not be aware of his secretary at all. So there is some credit but not to the extend that I would like to see.
I think this is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with. Maybe anonymous writing could be a solution, I dont know..
From my few years of contacts with him in the early 80's (he was on the board of our company, a spin-off from the TeX project), he was one of the most gracious, kind, thoughtful, humble people you could ever meet. And I think anyone who met him would agree.
Knuth is an oddball curmudgeon, and probably a bit autistic (watch his lectures), but he has managed to make the most of his strengths, and contributed to humanity with very little damage.
He never implied there are famous secretaries.
Sorry what?
Is that part of the very job of a secretary?
Is't not any much "slavery" than you ordering food from a waiter or asking a store assistant for a pair of shoes...
You know that this is like, the basis of entire civilization? The specialization of labour - you do what you're good at, I do what I'm good at, and we exchange the value produced by our work. His secretary is probably being paid for the job, and given that he/she specializes in e-mail correspondence, he/she will be much more efficient with it than Knuth himself could ever be.
We all employ others to do things for us, some people just do so with fewer middlepeople.
Ah, now we've gotten to the very nut of it: you don't think that secretaries are essential. Never mind that the sort of folks who employ them seem to think that they are: you, who aren't in their position, don't, and that's enough.
I'm reminded of pg's famous essay on the Blub Paradox. Programmers who use a semi-powerful language can see that others are less powerful than theirs, but can't see that more powerful languages offer anything much. Likewise, folks at one level of society can easily see that it makes sense to hire others to grow their food and make their clothes, but can't see that it makes sense for others at other levels to hire people to manage their schedules and correspondence.
A good secretary is a lever for a decision-maker.
I'm sorry you think the many people employed as secretaries should lose their jobs because you think their job is "unessential", but that attitude is patronizing and demeaning to the people who hold those positions. This world isn't about you, and you you have neither the right nor the authority to tell them how to live their lives.
I guess you never buy anything too -- or have people e.g. build your house, or the street cleaners take your garbage, the taxi driver to drive you etc.
So what's wrong with that? Or did you mean something else? I just don't see why someone would question his books/teachings based on his personal strategy for email communication.
employ
> important
uniquely skilled
> pure arrogance
division of labor
If you want to argue that the concept of having a secretary in the first place is arrogance, and object to all those roles around the world, go for it. But singling out one person is just flawed logic.
She definitely does use email. I don't see what is so wrong with paying someone else to do the necessary time consuming tasks with low priority when you have other high priority things to do. Should there also be no janitors?