I had a dream some time ago that I was at work, idly pushing pixels, when the Vice President ran out of his office to notify us that the machines had become self-aware and to take cover. The rest is a haze, reminiscent of Terminator 2 and full of dream logic (or lack thereof). Robots are after us with cold menace and horrifying precision. The only thing we have to use against them is our irrational, human unpredictability.
I wrote this all off as a nightmare induced by stress and late night consumption of Doritos, but shortly thereafter I began to wonder. All in one week, my technology went haywire. My computer was fried due to a faulty power supply, my USB thumb drive died, and my laptop battery was completely kaput. What was this? Some kind of rebellion? Did I need to invest in a bandanna and get ready for the coming time of myself against the machines?
I’ve been a user experience designer for awhile now, but despite my professional bravado I’m a bit of a technophobe. For me, looking at a computer stripped of its casing is on par with viewing an open cadaver.What’s that for? What are those complex patterns? The sight of the innards is overwhelming.
I don’t know all the inner workings of a computer, and though it might sound like blissful ignorance, I don’t want to know how it works. I just want it to work and continue to work. It’s there to do my bidding- not to be labored over and appeased with constant maintenance. It seems like my computer is always demanding new parts and my continuous parade of pleas. Who is the boss here? Aren’t you meant to help me?
That’s what I do as a UX designer; I make sure that people like myself never have to write out a command line, that they don’t have to crack open an instruction manual to make something they need to use everyday work. It should work, you shouldn’t have to figure it out, and I am here to protect you. So I expect the same from my PC and am continually disappointed. It expects me to solve quibbles between conflicting parts and know sequences to reset it and make it work. I enlist my friend to help me with this aspect. He explains and I try my best to understand his instructions and terminology, but it never sticks. I’m too impatient, and despite everything much prefer to maintain the illusion that it’s all ill-tempered entity executing my queries.
Part of my problem is I’m forcing this anthropomorphism upon my machines and am sure that they’re just trying to spite me. My method of fixing technology usually goes in stages: denial, anger, bargaining, anger, and at long last, acceptance and shoving it in the dark recesses of my closet until someone much more logical comes along and fixes it. I can’t tell you how many nights in college were spent pleading with my printer to please spit out my essay. I would compliment it, make deals with it, and when all else failed, threatened to give it to Goodwill.
So much science fiction has been dedicated to the idea that one day our technology will get the better of us and surely conquer the human race; that the complicated voodoo that makes it operate will go beyond even our greatest scientists and it will destroy us all with a satisfied, evil whir of gears and gizmos. Despite my phobias and imaginative unconscious, I don’t really fear this day anymore. When it comes, I’ll put on my warpaint, tie my hair back with the red bandanna, and go before the unstoppable destructors with my mouth forming a guilt trip like they’ve never heard. And ashamed, they’ll shuffle back from whence they came and once again listen to their true masters.
However illogical, this is my trump card against the machines.