Why I Hate Computers
“Blasts from the Past” is a collection of re-published articles dating from wa-a-a-y back to the time when I was publishing sf fanzines (1970s), through to some more recent articles published on (and about) the early days of the web (1990s).
Why I Hate Computers
(First published in July 1995)
My feelings towards computers must, I imagine, be like those of an Arabian camel driver towards his camels.
They are essential to his business, indeed they are his business. On good days, he may admit to a sneaking fondness for them. But most of the time he has to put enormous effort into getting them up and running and doing what they are supposed to. And on bad days – which seem to be most days – they spit in his eye or kick him up the backside.
The Multimedia Camel - that's the pretty black camel with the jewelled humps and four left feet.
And on really bad days, when he is desperately trying to get a valuable caravan full of dates between Kuwait and Riyadh before they spoil, they get lost and take him on an unguided tour of an Iraqi minefield.
Ten years ago, if you had asked me why I hated computers, I would have said that I hated them because they always did exactly what I told them to. Not what I meant them to. Only what I told them to. And they would do it every time. The analogy back then would not have been with camels, but with a dumb but keen mongrel dog who treated your morning newspaper the way she treated the sticks you threw for her down at the park – sure, she fetched it, but you didn’t tell her not to chew it, now did you? But at least you knew that she’d chew it every time.
In the last ten years, we have had incredible progress in computers and computing power. Only it didn’t quite go the way we expected it to. We thought we were developing artificial intelligence. Instead what we got was – artificial stupidity.
Computers and their operating systems have now become so complex that they are no longer the least bit predictable. Now they are like camels. One day, you hit your lead camel with a stick and he’ll get up and start moving. The next day, he might bite you on the knee instead.
It’s like that with modern computers: now they have attitude. Things are never exactly the same two days running. One day they’ll work perfectly, next you find that some perfectly innocuous program you’ve used a hundred times before has decided to bite back and refuse to work.
There’ll be a reason for it of course – computers are not subject to random whims. But finding out why may be beyond the wit of humans. There’s probably a reason the camel bit you on the knee, too, but what are your chances of finding out?
But camels, compared to computers, at least have a saving grace: they don’t talk back.
They may spit disgusting stuff at you and defecate on your foot, but at least they don’t say with bland and infuriating calmness: “Sorry, a system error has occurred” and show you a pretty picture of a time-bomb while spilling your dates all over the sand dune.
We are moving now, it seems, towards computers that can be controlled by voice. Indeed, Microsoft will sell you a sound system that comes with a neat microphone that clips to the top of your computer monitor. The trouble is, they don’t explain what will happen when you come out with the most common phrase I hear people yelling at their computers, the infuriated, baffled: “What!?!”.
I suspect the computer will just smirk at you with that sloppy, supercilious sneer that camels have and head off at high speed into the desert carrying away all your precious data, never to be seen again.
