We're going to pick up Mrs. Peculiar's car today, which hasn't started in two weeks. What was wrong with it, concerned readers may ask? The damn thing was convinced that it's 30 degrees below zero, and helpfully compensated by instantly flooding the engine. Fortunately for us, it proved to be a problem with the thermometer, a relatively minor ailment. Had it been a computer issue, we would have been in deep.
On top of that, we just got our Logick Engine back from a computer whisperer. (Let me add he did a great job, aged about 50 and lives with his mom, but he's cool, fixed us up for $30, whereas the goons at Best Buy wanted $150 just to get started.) It took a sudden notion that our CD/CD-ROM/DVD hardware had ceased to exist.
Why on earth does everyone regard computers as a stable, reliable technology? They're more hypochondriac than Mr. Woodhouse, and their maladies seem generally of an occult nature, caused by imbalances in their Logickal Humours and the malevolences of bodiless assailants.
As the readers has probably gathered by now, my relationship with computers operates very much in the spirit of a cargo cult: I wish to offer a moderately credible icon of propitiation and thereby receive wondrous bounty; I am inclined to attribute any irregularities to Daemonic influence. I understand intellectually that this is not a tenable position. But my point stands that the Number-Sorcerors are not as trustworthy as their acolytes would have us belive. Things go wrong with them all the time, and there exists an enormous industry dedicating to palliating the hassles they create. And yet we are asked increasingly to predicate all other aspects of our life on them, our transportation, our utilities, our kitchens, our health, our art. The problem is very clear with automobiles. I know a person who drove his new car over a stick, threw a sensor out of whack; no one in his or adjoining counties could even begin to look at it, and after a tow to the city it cost $500 just to begin repairs. This for a car with a 100% functional engine: it's absurd. Why is this touted as progress? For my next car, I think I may shop for a 50s vintage Ford truck, devote myself to home repair, and get to have the bitchen wrap-around windshield.
(Similarly, capacity, convenience and reliability of data storage media are one of the reasons I have decided to eschew digital a while longer in my search for some decent photography gear. I may post more on this in future.)
Sigh. I can't bring myself to be a total Luddite, though, appealing as it is. Sometimes technology does help people. For instance, Virgin Mobile will now make fake emergency calls to subscribers, to aid and abet their weaseling out of awkward social situations. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Better yet, they're making cell phones that incorporate breathalyzers (scroll down to "Sports car-design phone"). Will these assist bitter, jilted drunks in their efforts not to violate yet another restraining order by calling their ex-s in the wee hours? But I'd want one with a Herodotus Persian debate option (scroll to 1:133): a setting that wouldn't let you talk sober.
