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The general attitude from two different points of view about computers from Kurt Vonnegut's *Sirens of Titan* "Through a thin veil of noblesse oblige, Rumfoord let Salo know that to be a machine was to be insensitive, was to be unimaginative, was to be vulgar, was to be purposeful without a shred of conscience--" "'A machine I am, and so are my people,' he said. 'I was designed and manufactured, and no expense, no skill, was spared in making me dependable, efficient, predictable, and durable. I was the best machine my people could make.'" The two views are given order depending upon the viewer. Vonnegut orders imagination, senstitivity, et cetera, which the machine lacks, above the machine's qualities spoken by Salo. When a viewer like Vonnegut is unsympathetic to the machine's qualities, he not only privileges the non-machine, he has the machine undergo a transformation, like Salo does, so that the machine gains a bit of those humane qualities: "'How good a machine have I proved to be?' asked Salo." And follows a rebuttal. The other view can be had from someone like Tracy Kidder who proposes that the machine has a Soul and describes the humane effort to engender that soul in a New Machine. So it appears that the dichotomy of views is more complicated. Both appear to partake of each other but with different means to the same end. One says the machine is inherently inhumane and must become humane after human contact but must also become more un-machine to become humane. The other view says that the effort to make the machine is humane and because of this effort the machine has inherent humanity within it whether it behaves humanely or not, i.e. its machineness partakes in humanity because humanity makes machines. A better machine demonstrates a better humanity. Or in Jazz parlance, More soul.
Statement #1: I swear when I use the computer. Statement #2: I swear at the computer. I really do swear at the computer. But I'm also swearing at the physical manifestation of WORK (not getting done). The two are not separable. I am not "asking" the computer to perform useful tasks for me. I am WORKING the computer much as I would work a typewriter, or a Cusinart, or a car. When the computer ceases to work, I swear at it. The repetitiveness of working the computer precludes any "asking." Programmers have done all the asking by using sets or series of arguments, procedures, operations, and functions. They will not ask again. These "requests" are expected to be honored each and every time I work the computer. Hence, after the first request, it ceases to be asking. It becomes expected as a normal activity within the scope of working the computer. For example, let's suppose that I must do yard work around the house and one of the tasks is to edge along the sidewalk. In order to perform this task, I've purchased a string trimmer. At the factory, the asking was done many years ago and the string trimmer works according to that initial request--Plans were drawn up, et cetera, and the thing was manufactured and sold. My string trimmer is one of a long line of duplicate trimmers that should work in a certain way so as to allow me to trim the grass along the sidewalk. It has a motor at one end of a pole that rotates a spool of plastic string at the other end, and when that string contacts grass blades, the grass blades shear off. Simple, yes? But the string wears down and so more string must be fed from the spool in order to cut more grass. To do this, designers have asked that a button be placed at the end of the spool, like a clutch, so that, when the button is tapped, the spool will be disengaged from the motor's spinning. In this way, more string gets fed out since the reciprocal forces stop operating for the instant that the button is tapped. Some call this procedure, "Tap 'N' Go." I for one do not call it that. I call it, "Tap 'N' Stop," because the string never feeds correctly for me. I swear at my string trimmer which is the physical manifestation of yard work (not getting done). Then while swearing I must open up the spool housing and manually feed some string off the spool. If this only happened once in a great while, I would not swear. It happens many times, though, during edging. I have tried to modify the way in which I work the trimmer but to no avail. It works when it works. I cannot "ask" it to work better unless I have the requisite tools to do the asking. In much the same way as with the string trimmer, I have no way to ask the computer to perform differently (though some computer hobbyists might disagree). I may try different ways of working the computer--modify my behavior, et cetera --but I'm not able to reduce the program to the original requests (instructions), and re-ask in a way that will then make the computer work. The majority of users are also unable to re-ask the computer anything. Hence, the swearing heard from cubicles. Swearing is different from asking. Swearing is different from working. Swearing is the same as "not asking." Viz. "Screw you." "Screw this thing." "Gosh Darn." Some have said (facetiously) that when one works a word processing application--Microsoft Word, for example--one is programming the computer. Nothing could be further from the truth. The program has been written. It has been named, Word. One applies Word to the work that needs doing. One, then, in a sense, works Word, but one does not program Word. If Word needed to be programmed, then it would not be applicable. It could not be sold. Pretend that Word was written in lisp--a programming language. One would have to know lisp in order to program Word. How many users of Word know lisp (or any other programming language)? When one speaks of programming by using a word processor, one shows a misapplication of the word "programming": Programming does not work in that sense. It will not apply. Statement #3: My psychic energy is directed at the computer and at what I want the computer to do. The above three statements are summaries of events that take place and have taken place. The first statement is a matter of timing. The second statement is a matter of direction, and at whom or at what an emotion is directed. The third statement is an abstraction of my MIND in action and has no example in fact except that the words "psychic energy" sound fancy. Neither the first nor the second statement disputes the third statement, but the third statement does not explain the two preceding statements and instead DISTANCES me from the personal approach of the two preceding statements. "My eyes are tired" is distant from "I am tired" and while explanatory the first quote localizes tiredness in the same way that the third statement localizes "psychic energy." What is in fact directed at the computer and at the work to be done "on" (by, from, for, with) the computer? When I say that I swear at the computer, the content of the swearing resembles, "Piece of crap," and "What the heck, what the heck." There is no distance, no psychic energy, when I swear at the computer. Instead, there is intimacy. By intimacy, I don't mean that I would like to screw the computer. I mean that my anger is real and directed at the computer. By the same token, I can not act out this anger in a physical way by pounding on the computer because that would render the computer useless (though it may seem useless when I'm angry at it), so I must verbalize my anger without robbing the computer of its functionality. The computer is incapable of understanding my anger. The computer is incapable of understanding my swear-words. The computer has no psychic energy. Psychic energy as in "will" or "desire" or "need": Viz from an e-mail: We think hokum's similar to the way e-mail infiltrates and tries to obliterate the boundaries between a letter and a phone call. We would like e-mail to combine the stability of a letter with the witty repartee of a phone call, but we realize that e-mail seems concerned more with the process of its own making (as it goes along) in combination with the ever shrinking nature of its messages. We'd like to think an advantage of e-mail outweighs the above disadvantages: e.g., many to many communication (wee to thee). But as our friend, Nina, noted, she's begun to feel that none of the fifteen messages posted to her every two hours (day and night?) are really addressed to her and could she please be taken out of the loop? And as our friend, Pat, remarked so succinctly, "Tom, it occurs to me that I'm spending more time on e-mail answering these dribs and drabs of conversation than I ever spent talking to you on the phone. How's YOUR novel coming? So how's 'bout writing one long missive I can answer in one long one o' mine and save time on the ctrl-x key? Just a thought, so shaddup, or I slappa you zappa!" Well, since he asked, I'm working on this brief anatomy of hokum, and everytime I stall I go over to the computer to see if I have any e-mail, then I answer those messages, then I go back to work or read, and if I stall I answer some more e-mail, but I'm bouncing back and forth so much I'm losing my attention span and becoming more and more fragmentary and unable to concentrate--or able to concentrate because I've written six pages of this thing, for example, and maybe two paragraphs are about the question of hokum and the rest is RANT. And I'm thinking about my inability to concentrate, about waning attention spans, about the cyberrary (versus literary), about the waning of affect, about joyless youth, my midlife crisis, Pat's spending more time on e-mail answering dribs and drabs of conversation rather than reading a long missive from me. The computer can, in fact, sap my psychic energy. "My psychic energy is directed at the computer and at what I want the computer to do" is an anger-free statement. The assumption in this third statement has to do with "wanting" and "doing." I am assuming that the computer is capable of doing what I want it to do. How do I know whether the computer can fulfill this want? How do I know that the computer "does" anything? Is the computer actually "doing" anything? Let's suppose that, if, in the context of word processing, I "ask" the computer to do something, then what is this asking composed of? I am not asking as though it were a human being that could then respond with "yes" or "no." I am asking by keying in words and phrases. Those words and phrases are displayed on the screen. This is all I'm asking the computer to do: DISPLAY. But I do not say, "display my words and phrases," I expect the computer to do this when I am in the word processing program. When I am applying the program? The program is a word processing "application." When I am in this program, I expect that it will display. I don't have to ask it to display. This is one of the functions of the program. So when I swear at the computer, I am not swearing at the program or at some denial of a request I've made. I am swearing because the computer has not come up to my expectations. Well, how did I learn to expect DISPLAY from the computer without asking for it? Someone else did the asking--a programmer--so that I would not have to. The program meets certain expectations of a general nature without having to be asked over and over again because a programmer asked in a way that will be reiterated over and over as long as the programmer's program is used (or until it is revised with a different version number, e.g. Word 1.1 to Word 6.0, et cetera).
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 Thoughts on Spook Country by William Gibson
Thoughts on Pattern Recognition by William GibsonOneTwo Three Four Five Six Seven
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