Mother Gaffer and Machines: Back
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Mother Gaffer was not what you would call mechanically inclined.
Nowadays we might call her mechanically challenged. Yet she could
drive an automobile. To be sure, a ride with her at the wheel
could be a white knuckle experience. However, she did manage to
get around in her Model-A Ford with hardly ever a double-clutch
or a bent fender.
Even in those days, the automobile was no simple device. It had hundreds of moving parts. Yet, all those parts did work together. The driver did not have to know diddly about them or how or why they worked. The driver had to know a few simple things. How to start the engine, how to make the car go, how to point it, and how to make it stop. There are an enormous number of makes and models of automobile. Yet, from the driver's standpoint, they all work essentially the same. You learn one and you know them all.
We do not consider it amazing that it is possible to build a machine like an automobile. Nor do we consider it amazing that the thing is so simple to use that my mechanically challenged mother could work it. Only engineers and mechanics understand or care about the miraculous hidden beauty under the hood.
Another thing my mother could do was operate a telephone. She could pick that thing up and call me anytime, day or night. She could remind me that I hadn't called her and notify me that I wasn't such a big shot anyway. And while we're at it, why didn't I get a decent hair cut?
Consider the marvel of electrical engineering that a telephone represents. It takes sound waves, converts them to electrical signals, sends them over miles of wire, and converts the signals back to sound with astonishing fidelity. My mother did not know, and did not have to know, any of that. She never even thought about it. She only had to punch in a number and start shouting at me. Of course, near the end, we had to get her a phone with great big number buttons. So what! She could punch the buttons and get results. We do not consider it at all marvelous that we can recognize our mother's loving voice over the phone.
Now given all of the above, why can we not have a VCR that Mrs. Gaffer or I could program with some degree of confidence? Why do we always program it with the nagging suspicion that it won't record the show we selected?
Do you think it will ever change? I don't! I don't believe we will ever have easily programable VCR's. Nor do I believe we will someday have a computer operating system which does not present us with a General Protection Fault or the big blue screen of doom five or six times a week. We might have had one.
Somehow the golden apple got dipped in the poison of cultism.
The leaders swallowed it and, like Snow White and Rip Van, they
fell asleep. Now a new romance seems to be happening. Could it
be that Prince Bill will kiss Jobs and bring everything back to
life? What a saga!
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