“Computers are not machines, dad.”
That is like putting the last passenger boarding a 747 in the pilot’s seat.
Everyone laughs when I call them machines.
“Computers are not machines, dad.”
Whatever! When a tool, or device, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, I get mad. My toaster works great. Has for 3 decades! My car starts up every morning and magically delivers me to my destination. Most of the time. At least when it fails, I usually know what the problem is: Out of gas, flat tire...no problem, I just call Auto Club! Been a member for 39 years! Best investment I ever made! I can count on them when I need them.
When my cell phone decides to go on vacation or my desktop PC crashes, I get angry because I am so helpless to fix it. And it always happens just at the most inopportune time! I am in a hurry to a meeting and I need to print out the agenda, and suddenly my printer acts like it doesn’t recognize me. It just ignores the ‘print’ command. There goes another 45 minutes of my life!
I need to scan a document to send to my tax preparer, so we can meet the deadline. A little message comes up when I go to attach the document to the email, “Sorry, your document is too large”. It’s one page! Come on man, you’re killing me!
I have several windows open and I want to listen to a podcast while I am doing research. I click on the YouTube link, and suddenly my computer wants to play with a beachball. It just spins and spins, and I am frozen up altogether!
I go to the usual magic tricks. Turn it off and back on again! That works about 50% of the time. Never have figured out why that makes any difference whatsoever, but OK, whatever it takes.
In most cases I have to shut everything down and go do something else for a couple of hours. The computer realizes I have cooled down and comes back to the negotiating table. Sometimes…
Or not. Sometimes after an hour or two, when I run out of “solutions” in settings, or watching YouTube lectures, I just throw my arms up and capitulate. I give up! I just don’t have the skills, the patience of the time to keep beating my head against a wall.
Suddenly, my daughter walks in with my grandson. She is exasperated after spending the entire morning chasing the two year-old mini-Tasmanian Devil around the house, while trying to do laundry, clean the floors and wash last night’s dishes. She starts telling me all of the horror stories of the past week and how many times Finnegan has narrowly avoided death. I patiently wait for my opportunity to change the subject, but it soon becomes apparent that it may never come. Finnegan is running circles around both of us, now that he has ‘Papa’ to entertain.
She is feeding him with one hand while sending texts to her husband with the other. Then she starts printing something on my printer that earlier that morning had flipped me off and refused to work. I express my amazement and ask her “How’d that happen?”
I start my tirade about the printer and the scanner function that changes settings on its own. I complain that all of the elements of my home network, the PC, the internet camera, the monitor, the All-In-One printer, the modem and router, all come from different factories. Probably from different countries too.
They are essentially a Rube Goldberg system.
None of them have any connection to the others except by way of cables and microwave signals. It is a system that is by nature rife with vulnerabilities. While modern automobiles are built out of parts from hundreds of separate manufacturers, yet somehow they are reliable. When we need repairs, we take the car to the dealer and they fix it. They don’t dodge responsibility and claim that the part made in Korea won’t talk to the part made in Mexico.
This Home Network ‘thing’ is unreliable and easily hacked. Yet we depend on them just as much as we depend on our cars.
I am retired, but many people rack up more mileage navigating the internet than daily driving. We need vehicles that can handle the workload without having temper tantrums and constant absenteeism. My wife tells me to calm down, but it is hard for me to accept the consistent inconsistency of my Home Network.
When I was working in a corporate setting, we had a Help Line we could call for technical support. It was understood that employees could always keep up with the constantly changing digital society, so it behooved the company to provide instant help when productivity was concerned.
But as a homeowner, with no connection to corporate support, I am left with YouTube. My son says, “Make YouTube your friend.” But YouTube can’t come into your system and diagnose the problem. It is like a patient going to the doctor. You tell them your symptoms, they run some tests and then prescribe some solutions. How do you do that with YouTube?
It seems like the computer industry is made up of mutts that fuse their operating systems (I use that term with prejudice) together with apps and video and memory cards and upgrades and Pure Magic, and then hand them over to people like me. That is like putting the last passenger boarding a 747 in the pilot’s seat. No training, no previous flight time, just a YouTube video to answer all your questions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We are ready for departure. Please make sure your luggage is secure and your folding tables are in the upright position and your seat belt is properly adjusted and engaged. Will all flight attendants please be seated. We will be in the air shortly. I think I know what this stick is for...Sorry, I forgot to turn the microphone off! Ignore that last statement. Thank you.”