Infuriating Technology (or, Crisis at the Craft Store) (or, Giselle Needs Professional Help)

by Giselle Renarde

I'm much more patient than I used to be. Much less irritable, too.

But something happened earlier in the week that really set me off: my computer started acting up.  Maybe you can relate.  There's something about electronic devices not doing what they're supposed to do that's absolutely maddening.

I can handle a lot of intense stuff pretty calmly.  I have certification (albeit lapsed) in crisis prevention and intervention. Does that mean I never have out-of-control moments myself? Nope. I had one just a couple days ago. We'll get to that.

Last week I was at Michael's (the craft store) when a man burst through the door screaming and swearing.  Customers RAN from this person, who was obviously in crisis and perhaps has mental health issues.  While he screamed that he'd lost his towel and he was having a very bad day, a staff member asked if she could help him. She spoke clearly and casually, without a hint of fear and without that demeaning therapist voice people sometimes use when they don't know what they're doing.

The man asked for a product the store didn't carry (not a towel, by the way).  The staff member made a suggestion about where he might find it, which inflamed the man because he'd already been there.  He shouted about all the stores he'd visited. Nobody had what he needed.

The staff member listened without rushing him or interrupting. She eventually suggested a store he hadn't tried, and he left without escalation. The situation was handled extremely well. When you're speaking with a person in crisis, things can go really bad really fast. Here, they didn't.

Around the same time, my computer started acting up. Slowing down. Not responding.

Annoying, right?  I'm no expert, but I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I started running scans. Scan after scan after scan.  Nothing seemed to be working. The solutions I implemented to resolve my possible problems only exacerbated them.

I can't remember exactly what set me off.  After five days of getting zero work done because all my energy was going into resolving this issue, I had a bit of a mental health event myself.  The helplessness of not being able to fix my stupid little problem culminated in an explosion of screaming, swearing, crying, rocking, and punching myself in the head (a new one, for me). I'd lost my towel. I was having a very bad day.

It was a true crisis moment, brought on by... computer problems?

When I was a teenager, I remember a teacher trying to warn me off my ex because he'd once kicked the crap out of a photocopier.

There's something about technology.  It brings out my inner rage in a way humans never can.  I used to have a printer that could provoke similar reactions, though never as intense as this event. This was a bad one. I've never hit myself before. That was new and painful and actually pretty scary.

My computer's still not working properly. Mostly, programs randomly choose not to respond for reasons that remain a mystery. When this happens, I get up and walk away and do something else for a minute.  I know I have to take a breath and distract myself or risk another meltdown.

A close friend suggested seeking professional help, meaning an IT person. That made me laugh, because when my girlfriend made that same suggestion she was talking about a healthcare professional.

I think they're both right.

John Henry's Days Are Numbered

by Jean Roberta



Summer 1980:

It’s hot. The sun pours in through the office windows, and there is no air conditioning in this building. I’m sitting at my typewriter, a big black Olivetti that sometimes refuses to hum into life when I turn it on. Today I’m alone in the typing pool because so many women have taken time off while they can.

Too soon, we can all take as much time as we want. The government plans to replace most of us with the machine sitting in the corner, a thing called a Word Processor.

How can a machine “process” words? Does it chop them up into little pieces or puree them like a food processor? The supervisor is pretending that the advance of modern technology (in the form of this machine that no one here seems to know how to use) will somehow make government activities more streamlined and make life better for all of us.

Well, call me a luddite. I’m not convinced.

I’ve been spending every summer in government offices since I started university, and I do so much more than type words on a page from audiotapes. I design charts, handouts, letters, and reports. I proofread, photocopy and collate. Here at federal Health & Welfare, they need copies of health information that looks attractive and readable. Someone will bring me a rough sketch with words on it, and ask, “Does this make sense? Can you put this on a sheet of paper?” I always say yes.

I’ve been told that my flow chart of the organizational structure of the whole department is widely admired. I count every line and space, then double-check my figures to make sure everything is perfectly centred. Can a machine do that? I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m tempted to write a song to the tune of “John Henry.” Instead of a “steel-driving man,” the central character will be a key-pounding woman, with an optional chorus of “Lord, Lord.” She will challenge the damn word processor to a duel and she will win – at least in some way. And unlike John Henry, who won a race with a steam-powered drill, she won’t die of a heart attack.

They’re planning to train someone to use the word processor in the next few months. It obviously won’t be me because I’m just temporary. I usually replace someone who is away for three or four months, and those permanent members of the clerical staff will be first in line to replace everyone else.

I could be permanently locked out of the government jobs that have kept me going while I try to educate myself into a job that can’t easily be done by a machine.

Just seeing that object in the corner, looking as if it wants to push me out of my chair, is giving me shaky fingers. Damn it! A machine can’t really design anything. Can it?

Spring 2014:

By 1981, the clerk/typist jobs I relied on had dried up, leaving me to find more adventurous ways of earning a living to support myself and my child. But that is another story, or several.

For the story of John Henry, read the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)

I Politely Decline

By Lisabet Sarai

My poor husband! All I've done for the past two days is complain about the issues I've been having with my primary computer, the one I use for all my email, web browsing, and writing. You see, he's not only my lover, partner and co-conspirator – he's also my system administrator. And so when my computer insists on spontaneously rebooting two or three times in an hour - always when I'm in the midst of composing an important email (or so it seems!) - it's his problem as well as mine.

We've been trying to diagnose the defect, and meanwhile to find workarounds, another environment for me to do my work. So far we've hit one brick wall after another. I've literally been in tears (out of frustration), several times today. Thus, I would appear to have plenty of fodder for this week's topic: This Sucks.

However, I politely decline to discuss my digital issues any further. I'm sorry, but I believe that kvetching is bad karma. As soon as I start telling you how terrible everything is, I start to measure my difficulties against those suffered by others. And frankly, I'm ashamed of myself.

Yes, I have computer problems at the moment. But I have a computer – actually more than one. Right now I can't accomplish all the tasks I need to finish, but hey, I'm sitting here typing this blog post, which was one major thing on today's to-do list.

Not only do I have computational facilities that would make many an author green with envy, I have the technical know-how to resolve most types of misbehavior. When I can't figure something out on my own, I can draw on my husband's vast expertise. I don't have to truck the machine over to a service center (which is a blessing, since our baroque configuration would be far beyond the capabilities of most repair people). I don't have to spend a penny (unless of course we figure out that some hardware component is to blame. But that's part of the cost of doing business – and tax deductible!)

And let's broaden the scope a bit, to illustrate that honestly, it would be ridiculous for me to complain. My husband's not just smart, he's also considerate, creative, funny, and a full-body kisser. We live in an amazing apartment, which we rent at a bargain price (considering its characteristics). We both have jobs we love, challenging without being too stressful. We're both about as healthy as one could ask, given our ages.

I didn't get much done today, compared to my objectives. However, composing this post has helped me put the whole crappy computer situation into perspective. Yes, it sucks that I have to face a bit of inconvenience, that I have to accept that sometimes the fates have different ideas about how my day will go than I do. Nevertheless, I'd say I was a serious candidate for the most fortunate woman on the planet. 

Love, Sex and Artificial Intelligence

by Thomas "cmdln" Gideon

I love my computer. I'll admit it. Does that mean I have a deep, meaningful relationship with it? Not so much. I like to think that I've gotten beyond a mere techno fetish into deeper considerations of how programmable, general-purposes computers are able to help us create beauty, discover meaning, and effect change.

Sure, it started more with a fascination for form and style rather than any sort of substance. My relationship with my computer, and computing in general, has taken time to evolve.

I guess it isn't so different from the emotional relationships that characterize my rich social life as a human being. For those intriguing similarities, though, the notion of an intimate relationship with any kind of artificial construct still strikes me as preposterous.

Why is that?

Moore's law, which describes the acceleration of raw computing power as a function of transistor density on a chip, has some researchers in machine intelligence drooling over finally achieving comparable raw computing power to that housed in our humble brain pans. Recent specialization in this field of research has shown promise on the necessary software to transform brute gigaflops into something approaching general intelligence. Despite the constant promise of artificial intelligence being just beyond the horizon for the past few decades, it actually does seem like we may hit a tipping point within our lifetime.

I still cannot see having an emotionally fulfilling relationship with a synthetic being. There are more optimistic researchers betting that intentionally and craftily inspiring emotional connections will form a valuable part of the repertoire of human-machine interaction in future systems, computational and robotic.

Donald Norman's latest book, Emotional Design, Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, goes beyond his earlier efforts in understanding the rational basis for design. He explores how emotion can override reason and lead us to making irrational but inwardly satisfying decisions. His work and others in the same vein suggest value in exploiting that phenomenon to ease the frustrations many users encounter in existing hardware and software designs. It is not that emotionally designed products are better but they consciously tug at our inner chords to get us to put up with their other less endearing quirks.

That's a bit cynical but you can see the optimistic scenario easily enough. Couple thoughtful, rational design with compassionate emotional design and the potential boggles the mind. Not only would you get greater effectiveness or productivity, but you'd feel good as you used the tools that made those improvements possible.

MIT has been exploring these threads of social technology for quite a bit longer, most notably with the Kismet project. Little more than a robotic caricature of a face, Kismet and its researchers seek to discover some of the core components of our emotional interactions. To hear the researchers talk about Kismet, the results are surprising and compelling.

When presented with a noisy information channel, the human mind is adept at filling in the blanks. We have apparently evolved considerable neural machinery to pull off this feat. In emotional interactions, we may have similar but less well understood abilities. We want to project and fill in the emotional gaps even in the most rudimentary systems.

More recently, tweenbot explored similar social interactions with an equally minimalistic construct. Norman, Kismet and tweenbot suggest that a simulacrum doesn't have to be pitch perfect for us to form an emotional connection.

Of course, if the appeal is made to even baser instincts, there appears to be even more latitude. Well before the media rich web, enthusiasts of the form flooded Usenet groups with strings of seemingly random characters that with the right arcane invocations could be transformed into prurient images to suit all tastes. At the risk of understating things, technology and the sex industry have a long and storied relationship. Many folks have already suggested that key technology innovations, such as the DVD format and high quality video codecs for online distribution, are the direct result of our monkey sex drives.

Sex and technology is a whole other topic to explore. No doubt there is plenty of research comparable to the emotional technology writings and projects I have cited. We, as a species, don't seem to have a problem with emotionally connecting with our technology nor do we collectively blink an eyelash at its increasing role in the development of our sexual natures.

I remain skeptical and my objection really crystallized when Helen Madden expressed a simple idea on a panel on which we both participated at a recent science fiction convention.

What if your sex toy could say no?

It would be easy to devolve from that simple question into some pretty heavy and potentially disturbing psycho-analysis. Or to be flip and dismissive. At that moment, in the context of a discussion of love, sex and artificial intelligence, it really captured a latent but necessary leg to the tripod of a satisfying relationship. I've discussed emotional connection and intimacy but I think these aren't able to get past technologically-mediated self-gratification without some degree of agency, of free will.

It seems so obvious in retrospect. It also represents a largely unspoken holy grail of artificial intelligence. When discussing our relationships with other social animals, we completely take it for granted. It isn't even worth mentioning.

In the context of a relationship with a constructed being, it is critical because we haven't been able to instill true agency into any of our creations as of yet. We are not even sure how to measure it, to know when we truly have achieved it. However, it is only when our creations are capable of evolving beyond their programming, to follow independently derived desires, to say no to us, that they achieve equal footing with the other social agents available to us. Only when there is the risk of rejection is there a sense of satisfaction in successfully developing a healthy emotional, even intimate, relationship, regardless of whether the agent's programming executes in flesh or in silicon.

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Thomas "cmdln" Gideon is a self-described hacker, curmudgeon and hacktivist who ponders the intersection of technology and society on his twice weekly program, The Command Line Podcast, which can be found at http://thecommandline.net/. A student of The Hacker Ethic, he is particular fascinated by its contentions that computers can be used to create beauty and that they have the potential to effect positive social change. He follows a number of related topics of interest such as the creation and distribution of social media as a form of peer production, the future of computing both as realized in its physical architecture and the ways we program these forthcoming systems, and how computing relates to our own astonishing capacity for reasoning.

His interest in artificial intelligence combined with his habit of speaking at science fiction conventions led to his being a co-panelist with Helen Madden contemplating the intersection of social relationships, intimacy and machine minds.



Love, Sex and Artificial Intelligence by Thomas "cmdln" Gideon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Based on a work at thecommandline.net.