Humans use of tools is what is theorised to be the reason for our evolution, but not merely using tools but integrating them into our daily lives and then finding new uses for them. When a graphic designer is given the tool, the tool is a personal computer this opens up a multi-faceted array of uses. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) opens with a scene of ape-like humans learning how to use a bone as a tool but also as a weapon, then fast-forwarding four million years into the future. Upon my first watch, I couldn't understand the link between these two sets and what the significance was. Dave the astronaut and HAL the spaceship's computer; the tale of man vs. the machine, this can be taken back to the industrial revolution in Britain, when machinery was becoming a prominent tool for humans to use and adapt, however, these new innovations are proceeded with caution as we learning how to adopt a new tool, not letting this tool hinder us but help to further our intelligence. There will always be resistant to a new tool and an adjustment period into this new way of living. In Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times (1936), Chaplin is the Little Tramp on an assembly factory line working for a means of survival in the modern, industrial world, making a comedic yet still poignant comment on the affect machines have had on the conditions of human employment that financial gain is then put above human expenditure.

Blauvelt comments on the effect of the personal computer had for graphic designers initially in the 1980 "it transformed and eventually eliminated the work of various production artists, photomechanical technicians, key liners, paste-up artists, typesetters, colour separators and even some printers"