Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

My last post seems to have been misinterpreted by several people. That can only mean one thing: I was not clear in my writing. In fact, I have no negative feelings toward the client who did not maintain her computer. It would be more proper to say that I am frustrated by the tendency of people to assume there is more power and robustness in the machines that they use in daily life than is warranted by simple observation. That combined with my desire to spend more time tutoring than diagnosing and repairing led to my seeming rant about an errant client.

The fault was not in the client. Most of the people who read this column regularly drive automobiles with automatic transmissions. Very few of my readers probably know how an automatic transmission works or what is the correct way to service it. That is largely because the techniques of designing and making transmissions are relatively mature compared to the same considerations for both hardware and software computational systems. If my client has any fault, it is that she assumed computers are as reliable and service-free as her automatic transmission.

Perhaps my client is part of the best way possible to improve computers. Consider that when I was a boy, motorcycles were driven exclusively by men with a mechanical bent. Home sewing machines were used exclusively by women who were not trained in mechanical engineering. Motorcycles were poorly designed and constantly in need of repair. Sewing machines had quickly evolved from being simply reliable straight stitching devices to having the ability to sew complex patterns and designs, often in multiple colors. The people who drove motorcycles reveled in their ability to keep them going, but the people who used sewing machines would junk a machine that did not work correctly and tell their neighbors not buy that brand. I believe this difference helped drive the rapid evolution of sewing machines while motorcycle evolution awaited the Japanese innovations that changed the market.

A similar transformation is still underway with computers. We have advanced far beyond the early adopter and hobbyist phase, but we have not yet reached the same degree of utility as automatic transmissions.

Why should computers need to be opened and cleaned periodically? Why are they not self-cleaning? Will they become more reliable and less demanding of service just as our refrigerators now use less energy, dispense ice and cold water without opening the door, and almost never need service? I think so, but in the meanwhile we are in the middle of ongoing changes.

Even basic tutoring is frustrating because my clients often work hard to absorb lessons that will likely become obsolete quickly. When I was a young student in high school, we learned a method to extract the square root of numbers by an algorithm similar to long division. As a hobbyist, I built things using vacuum tubes and used a slide rule to calculate the parameters. None of those skills are useful anymore. Similarly I doubt that navigating Windows will continue to be a necessary skill for clients to learn. There will always be a place for Linux and hobbyists just as we still have ham radio operators (although they do not require Morse code anymore and are more likely to be into video than clicking a message). In the meanwhile how do I answer a client who want a recommendation on what new computer to buy?

Click here to read about my new tutorial on helping seniors. The new version has grown considerably over the original. It has more topics and anecdotes, and fewer typos. While you’re at it, check out my expanded tutorial on decision theory.