THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND

I know you probably find computers frustrating because they behave in ways you don’t understand, aren’t always reliable and let you down when you need them most. Here’s a way to feel a lot better about all of that. Instead of thinking of the computer as a robot, or even as a tool, think of it as your friend.

Remember when you first met a friend? How fascinating you found him? He was quick and easy to get along with and he would do pretty much whatever you wanted. Then, as time went by, he started to slow down, he’d take a long time to warm up and would sometimes be completely unresponsive. But if you’re going to point the finger of blame, start with yourself. Look at all the crazy things you’ve asked your computer to do:

• just sit there taking dictation while you typed in the most inarticulate correspondence in the history of the English language;
• download and install three hundred megabytes of antivirus software while you simultaneously surfed all the XXX websites;
• print off a thirty-page document with 3D graphics while you tried to get some photo software to magically focus a picture you took;
• scan twenty-five thousand files looking for a document you lost, and all you could remember about it was that it had the word BUT in the text;
• survive a can of Mountain Dew spilled into the keyboard;
• spend a night in Alaska in the trunk of the car;
• be used to pry open the screen door;
• have an incident involving gravity and a concrete floor;
• operate a webcam with bad lighting so that relatives in Europe could see how ugly you are.

I think once you see how you’ve abused this friend over the years, you’ll realize it has been reasonably loyal and is doing the best that can be expected under the circumstances. Hopefully people are saying the same thing about you.