User-Hostile Systems?
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I have just returned from one of the stranger rituals engaged in by those who spend time in reality, called "camping." For those of you who are super-glued to your computer (literally, I am guessing in some cases,) camping is this strange thing that some humans tend to do where they leave the air-conditioned comfort of their homes to "get away from it all," but this plan often ends up backfiring on them, as when people try to get away from it all, there is plenty more of "it all" waiting for their arrival at the campsite, usually located in the middle of nowhere. After taking forever to set up such things as tents (kinda' like some sort of shelter, but without any of the benefits) and other things like that. After that is out of the way, you have things like the weather, mosquitoes and the ever-present threat that something that might be inclined to eat you may pop out of the woods. Still, the ambiance of the woods is something that can never be duplicated on a PC... Kinda' makes you wonder if someone with a shaker missile is waiting in the shadows somewhere...) All in all, I think that I have managed to drive away the swarm of mosquitoes enough that I can actually see the monitor now, so I guess I'll try to write a column about now.
As I mentioned last week, this column marks the 50th issue of the Sledgehammer that I have done. In some cases, one might use this as an opportunity to make some sort of cheesy retrospective on whatever the heck they have been working on all this time, but in this case, I have decided to eschew this approach. For one thing, who in their right mind would actually want to hear all this stuff when the entire collection of back issues is available on line? Just be warned, like I said on the main page, don't read too many of the things at once, or you might lose your mind (trust me, I have been the one writing these things and I lost my mind long ago, otherwise, I might be using my time for productive stuff instead of constantly babbling about how stupid computers are and plastering it all over the Internet. Add the next disclaimer you see to this warning, just for good measure.
Anyway, over the past few weeks, I have been writing about pretty much the same thing, about how personal computers were never meant to serve any useful purpose in the first place, but the plan for this backfired and blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda... Well, it looks like I'm going to keep this antiquated theme going for as long as I can milk ideas for columns out of it. (If you seem a little lost at this point, you probably are.) Sure, the geeks are now virtual slaves to their own intentionally defective creations... We have to wonder what computers would be like if the plan the geeks who came up with the things actually got their way (or at least what they may have turned into without the dubious contributions of such egos as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.) Here are a few ideas as to what computers might end up being like if it weren't for the fact that most of the people who use the things find it a challenge of remembering to breathe...)
- "User friendly" means that it doesn't delete files because it doesn't like you. If the lusers had realized that computers were a cruel hoax in the first place, the user interfaces would become increasingly harder to use, until finally they reached a point where the computer was actually hostile to the user. GUIs and other user-friendly stuff like that would be taboo, and the mere mention of such a thing would be blasphemous among the geeks, and in many cases it would likely be grounds for being dragged out of the computer lab and beat senseless with software manuals (which would be written completely in binary, making them quite useless for their intended purpose.) In fact, in order to even get the computer to run one of your programs, it would be quite likely that a certain amount of groveling would be necessary. Of course, in order to get the system to run the program without crashing, deleting your thesis and insulting your dog, you would have to bow down before the computer, buy upgrades at it's every whim, and basically become a slave to the computer. Wait a minute... I have just been informed that many computers already act like this. Of course, the manuals are not written in binary code, but most of the lusers out there fear them anyway, because if they read them, there would be no excuse )
- Technical support would not exist. Sure, when all of this stuff decides to make a nice little mess of your computer, there would be a number to call, but it wouldn't be tech support. Instead, you would end up speaking to a geek who was in on the original conspiracy, and whose sole purpose in being there is to make the lusers feel like total idiots. While the lusers described the millions of dollars that went down the drain after the machine decided that it didn't like them (and because the millions of dollars worth of data was depressed, as the computer would tell the therapist before it was sentenced to a life of database processing without parole) the geeks would then explain how to destroy the computer in seven different languages (with the hope that the luser may actually have a chance of understanding one of them.) Normally, this procedure could be done just as easily by a recording, but why waste the opportunity to hear what boneheaded stuff the lusers are trying to use computers for... Even to a geek, it would be hard to believe that anyone would try to use a computer for anything productive.
Basically, it all boils down to the fact that computers wouldn't be much different than they are now, just that the geeks out there would be a whole lot happier with the things. Sure, there are some places where one can actually get tech support that doesn’t suck, but if people knew how to spell their names without looking at their driver’s license, there would be no need for it.
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Copyright (C) 1997 Brian Lutz. All rights reserved.
"I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it."
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