When I opened my laptop this morning, the blue screen was counting down as it stored some kind of information on my hard drive. Evidence, should I need it, that the operating system had lost its bearing and collapsed suddenly.
I am struck suddenly by the realization that the computers I've been living with these last fifteen years are far less reliable than the VW bus I owned in the early '90s, an antique that stripped a spline on its drive wheel in the middle of death valley once, and another time stopped running on the freeway because the fuel hose had slipped off the carburetor and was merrily spraying gasoline across the entire engine compartment.
This thing, this machine, on which my livelihood depends, these contraptions that so many of us spend our days fiddling with, constantly grappling with mechanical and software failures of one kind or another. Somehow to realize that these ubiquitous computational devices are far, far less reliable than thirty-year-old VW buses fills me with wonder. The incredible patience of millions of computer users. The unfounded optimism that today's task will somehow be completed even as thousands of us are stranded on the side of the road, wondering how to bring the contraption back to life.
Quick! To the emails! To the presentations! To the spreadsheets! Before the next blue screen stops us in our tracks!
