4-8-02, Voice in the Crowd
Computers are
Programming People
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
It is becoming clear that people don’t program computers. Computers program people. Try talking to someone who has worked too long in that technical forest and you’ll be talking to someone with tunnel vision. You’ll find someone whose train of thoughts won’t deviate from the programmed pattern.
I admit to being a reluctant computer user.
Having gotten my first old Underwood typewriter while in
high school, I later made my living with one in newspaper work.
At one point, when my fingers were young and nimble, I could type a
hundred words a minute on a standard machine.
When I contracted to write a biography for a lady in Illinois, she had
her notes on a five and a quarter inch floppy disk.
I needed a computer and she gave me an Eagle II as part of my fee.
This TV looking contraption with its small green screen had 64 K. of
memory and required two floppy disks. One
was for programming and the other held data.
At the time, I later heard the old Eagle was state of the art.
It’s just that other computer makers went off in a different direction.
I learned how to use the Eagle and I admit it was
convenient when I made a mistake I could just back up and type over the error.
It was a luxury to be able to insert a word, paragraph or several pages
in the middle of a section without having to retype the whole piece.
I was hooked.
A friend said I needed to move into the same realm IBM,
Microsoft and the giants claimed. I
bought a computer made by a friend. It
worked for a while—and then game of updating began. Bill Gates and the guys who make software to work the
computers are pretty slick. Each
new program wipes out the previous one so you can’t go back. After several computers, I moved into a Compaq which I
thought would last forever. Despite
a five-year on site maintenance contract, I can’t get the technicians’
attention long enough to explain what’s wrong.
When I try to make an appointment for someone to come with tools in hand,
they put me on hold. Same thing
with the Hewlitt Packard I later bought. You
have to know the language to tell them what’s wrong.
You learn to stagger along with the ailments of the computer.
But the worst part is dealing with the web servers who
host a site. We were using
Interliant as host for our IPS Features. Interliant
bought them out and they raised the monthly price $2.
Dell was cheaper and we decided to change.
We already had one site hosted by Dell and were pleased with it.
Dell gave us the temporary address of the site and I started transferring
files over. It the folder was
large, I had to break it down into smaller parts to drag it from the Interland
site to Dell. Sometimes it would
begin copying a folder over and proceed for an hour, only to stop and say the
connection was closed.
I kept calling the 800-number to talk to a technician.
Each one had a different solution and claimed he had fixed the problem.
It wasn’t fixed. I quickly
learned each technician was programmed to handle one phase of a problem and had
to call in someone for a different area. Just
out of curiosity, I decided to try dragging files from the Interland site to the
other Dell site we had. No problem.
But they wouldn’t go into the new IPS site.
I kept trying to tell them there was a defect in the
Dell site they gave me. They
wouldn’t listen and often told me I could not transfer files directly from one
site to another. They wouldn’t
listen when I told them this was the way I had transferred files for years, and
that I had already moved half of the files into the reluctant site.
After two months, they gave me a different one.
It worked. I quickly
transferred all the files into the new site.
Just as a safety measure, I kept the old site active until I was secure
with the new Dell site. Everything
seemed okay and I had the domain server point to the new temporary site they
gave me.
Trying to save $2 a month, I wasted nearly three months
and wound up back where I started from. But
I can’t help worrying about those computer technicians.
I wonder if there is a deprogramming retreat set up for them when they
get burned out. These offbeat
religions have system set up to heal brainwashed converts.
Is there any hope for a computer person programmed by a computer?
-30-