The World Wide Web was created in August 1990. This month marks
its 12th anniversary.
Somewhere in the World Wide Web, maybe in the unpaved median of
the information superhighway or in the secret nether lands of Explorer,
I seem to have lost the clue to computer enlightenment. At the keyboard,
I experience the sinking sensation of Indiana Jones at the mouth of
the Temple of Doom. A familiar phrase tugs at the edges of memory.
“Abandon hope all who enter here.”
I enter anyway. Battered and beat down from a hundred encounters,
there is hardly any hope left to abandon.
It’s not like we have a choice. Almost every aspect of our
life is touched, tended or controlled by a computer. And every day,
like Audrey, the people-eating plant, computers want, need, require
more from us in return for our dependence on them.
It isn’t really “a computer”. It is a multitude
of individual elements. Each element has a queen sized ego, believing
it is the most important element, and an accompanying queen sized
laundry list of personal items it simply must have to support life.
At first, it is all about power - getting power, having power, saving
power, power surges. Then, it is about memory. The sky is the limit
and, like scorched earth receiving rain, the computer sucks up every
drop.
Then it is about software, a major misnomer for a hardball business.
The software industry has no equal for crass materialism, monumental
arrogance, and pure, perfectly distilled contempt for the end user.
In an absurd, exasperating spiral of spite, one operating system won’t
communicate with another operating system, that file can only be opened
with this version, this program will only work with that software.
When it doesn’t work, it is never the computer’s fault.
It is because of the network, the web site, the server, the browser,
the software, the ISP, the USB or maybe sunspots on the solar surface.
It is also never the fault of the computer experts, camped comfortably
in the state of Constantly Rebooting, USA. They are vexed by circumstances
beyond their control. If, by some wildly unlikely chance, circumstances
were within their control, everything would surely be wonderful. Acolytes
at the Temple of Doom, they believe computers hold the answers to
life. Like Tinkerbell, all we have to do is believe real hard.
I believe that I have wasted hours amounting to months of my life
staring hopelessly at a black, blank or blue screen. I believe it
is time to renounce the canons of computer know-how that say the going
wage for computer inadequacy is personal and financial failure. I
believe the net is a magic carpet that can also be a phenomenal vacuum
-of time, energy and life. Above all, I believe that computers are
a tool, only a tool and not always the right tool.
Knowing a little about computers, like knowing a little about your
car, endows confidence and dissolves mystique. But, we don’t
have to reinvent internal combustion just to drive to the market.
We shouldn’t have to circumnavigate the world just to get email.
Since a computer is only a tool in the toolbox, maybe the flaw is
in our expectations. We think computers should be as reliable as Craftsman
screwdrivers and as versatile as duct tape. We wish they were.
We should know better. Nothing works as well as duct tape.
