or
The way to understand the incomprehensible.

by
Jerre Skog

Since the first time I managed to write some sentences in Word on a computer back in 1995 I feel I´ve come a long way towards understanding how these machines can be used (or misused!). I can still feel slowly driven to the brinks of madness and I can still click desperately on everything in sight trying to find out how to do things MY way and not the machine´s but at least I usually don´t get hysterical when things pop up on the screen telling one thing or another. Even though it´s a continous struggle for domination, most times nowadays I leave the PC with a feeling that I wasn´t completely defeated and I can even sometimes do more or less what I intended to do without shouting for the nearest “expert” (usually snot-nosed kids of 12 or so) for help every 10 minutes.. And with the best of them I can mix in gigabyte, RAM, pdf-format, DOS, Boot, BIOS, driver, Cyclic redundancy check, JPEG and megaherz into any conversation (without having the slightest idea what I´m talking about).

The first thing about computers is to learn to click on the mouse. Sometimes single-click and sometimes double-click and all the time remembering whether it should be done on the left or right button. Most beginners learn to do this in the first years and it causes surprisingly few heart-attacks if one learns to be well stocked up with the proper sedatives. Where on the screen to click is a mystery that science still is trying to find solutions to.

Internet poses new and exciting worlds. To communicate in real time as you do when you chat means that when you write something on the screen you do it exactly when you do it! (!!!?) Not yesterday or tomorrow but NOW. That´s almost a celestial realization. You get visions of Houston Space Control with millions of blinking lamps and satellites. If you want to find facts about any subject at all you write a keyword in a search engine and in short time you can choose between literally thousands of websites that contain that word. The trick is to narrow down the search. Unless you have a lot of time don´t search for “John”(29.656.852 hits) or “Sex”(17.600.820) or “Land”(12.804.549)! If you want to know more about “Potrezebie” on the other hand you just have to wade through 7 hits on Alta Vista. The best is to be very specific. Try “the+ last+ words+ of + anatolius+ pfefferschlepper-fitzgerald”. The chance of hits are small, but IF there are any they ought to be relevant.

There are chances to discuss various themes on the Usenet in different Newsgroups. Before doing it in political groups I advice an advanced course in desensitivity-training! The language, invectives and expletives are on a level that is astonishing for anyone who has learnt to debate properly. It is also advisable to have a good and updated Anti-virus program as well as a fire-wall to protect the PC against interference from adversaries or people who just enjoy destroying. To avoid spam-mails seems to be impossible, but one can direct at least the regular spammers to a kill-file so one doesn´t have to read for the 199th time how to “become a millionaire” in 4 weeks by sending in 35$ to some optimist who wants to sell his hairbraine schemes.

Surfing on the net is an expression dreamed up by some people with a very sick sense of humor. I´d like to exchange a few words with those fellows! When you surf you´d expect it to go swoosh here and swisch there in shorter time than it takes to open a book. What do you get? You click on something, ....you go make coffee, you go back to the screen to see if whatever was supposed to open has opened. Then you click to get to a more interesting place, go drink the coffee, go to the screen, .....click on .... well you know what I mean. If you want to see real swoosh happening you go to a “3-legged tortois”-race.

The “experts” say my computer is too slow. But here I´m sure is something very funny afoot. According to the papers that came with the machine (Pentium I, 800 MB HD, 128 MB RAM, 233 MHz ) it is one of the fastest on the market! How??? I ask myself can it get slower after two years´ use only? Do PC´s burn a gasket? Do they get amnesia? Can their arteries clog up? No! Exactly!! It works as well as it did when it was brand new. So what is this about being to slow then?

I can tell you after all the research I´ve been doing on the subject: It has been braked, slowed! Intentionally! It´s the messy truth even if it sounds very strange.

It is like this. There is a little guy in America, (it´s probably very secret, for everyone who work with computers mention his name in low reverential tones like he was Messias or something). Anyways, this fellow, Bill Gates, he makes programs for almost all computers. AND he makes them more and more complicated all the time. You know, crams them with ones and zeros. Finally he has stuffed so many 010101100 into the program that the machine simply gets confused and nervous and in the end breaks down. Then when the fellows who make the machines notice that they work slower and slower.... then of course they have to make new machines that work faster still determined to make the things go swoosh. You know what happens next?? Exactly! This fellow Bill makes a new program that everyone HAVE to have, and in it he has crammed even more millions of 1 and 0 and... we´re back where we started and can go and drink coffee while the screen fill up with the speed of fermenting wine. Because of this I see very little swoosh and get much too much coffee.

Then when the screen starts to fill so slowly that I even have time to go and shop for the coffee, I have learnt that there is only one thing to do. One must upgrade the computer. What you do then is to exchange a few things inside the box for other things that looks exactly the same but cost double as much. They are supposed to contain more megabyte or megahertz or something. How can they do that when they are the same size?? That seems very suspicious to me.

The first thing to attend to is a little square thing with a lot of legs that is called a processor. It usually needs cooling, is very intelligent and can suddenly just cease to function. Much like the human two-legged version named professor. Professors on the other hand can come in most shapes and are not always square. More memory is always recommended. RAM and other stuff can be added. Get a few bags of the black ones with 16 legs and smack them in everywhere it looks a bit empty on the big motherboard, which btw is another must on the scrap list. A new one with room for all Bill´s 10011 comes very high on the list, but I haven´t figured out exactly why and how yet. While doing all this upgrading I have understood it might be clever also to modernize the thing by adding a DVD, CD-burner, egg-cooker, turbo-charger and GPS or RGXPVNZ (provided they don´t interfere with the Schlitz-Circuits in the SSUV-eliminator. Check with expert before these modifications)! Don´t meddle with the power-supply unit. Just replace it with something that has double the present wattage output of stabilized voltage.

After all this modernization for an outrageous amount of money one has to configurate the whole mess. If I understand it correctly this means that one has to tell the machine what stuff it has inside so it doesn´t think it has stuff it doesn´t have and thinks it has the stuff it has. And the other way round, of course! It is probably like when they transplant organs on humans and tell the awakening congressman that he should watch his alcohol-consumption as his new liver comes from a teetotaller sow. In my opinion this configuration thing is a little abrupt. It smells too much of ordering things around. Much better to let them grow used to each other gradually. Let the motherboard date the processor for a while. Let him whisper some of Bill´s 000000 in her input-selector. This is surely the reason for all system crashes that occur. Completely strangers of programs and hardware are expected to work side by side or under or over each other who haven´t even been properly introduced to each other!!!

Crashes! YES!!! There´s another interesting phenomena. Anyone who works with Windows has learnt, mostly the hard way, that such system-crashes occur. And they do! I promise! Then one must hope that it wasn´t too long since the work produced was saved! I had once the debateable pleasure of writing on an arrangement on an Ellington-medley for 14 hours when the PC in very brusque language suddenly told me “The program has performed an unauthorized task and will be shut down. Data that has not been saved will be lost”. Goodbye Mood Indigo, A-Train and C Jam Blues in ¾ tempo. What!!!???? What in the world is the matter with those machines. They can ask you at any time like a nosy big brother “do you really want to do this”, “are you sure you want to delete that”, or “do you want your coffee now or later” so why the hell can that stupid program not tell me “This is a highly unauthorized command!! Do you still want to do it? DON´T!!!!! And IF, make sure that you save first!” It is easy to get a sneaky feeling that Bill & Co also own some tranquilizer manufacturers. As far as I´m aware computers are the only things outside race-circuits that are expected to crash regularly. I also have to add that I find the computer´s comments very condescending, like I was stupid or something. I´d prefer a bit more of “your wish is my command, oh great master” provided it HAS to comment on anything in the first place!

How the %-*//Ö&§$?*%&§ can anybody become a billionaire producing inferior stuff that is EXPECTED to malfunction? Would anyone accept a car model that regularly just stops to function? Would anyone accept a TV that forgets it’s channel-setting once a week? Personally I fail to see why we should be content to put up with stuff that doesn´t perform the way we are led to believe. And I don´t get reassured when I know that most weapon systems, banking systems and accounting and social-security systems depend on and often are masterminded by these idiotic machines.

On the other hand I have to confess that for someone like me who write, rewrite, add, regret and have great capacity for forgetting, the computer can be a blessing with all its possibilities for copying, pasting and corrections. The trick is never to let it get the upper hand!

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