h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'The Tardis is more than a machine, its like a person. It nedds coaxng, encouraging, persuading'
'You mean its just as unreliable'.

So said Doctor Who about his faulty time machine. I'm presently surrounded by technologies that are just as unreliable as people and no amount of encouraging, coaxing, or persuading seems to make them work any better. I've even tried begging. Nothing works. None of my technology works the way it should. Machine don't have deaf ears for my pleading to fall on. what am I saying? Machines don't have ears. Then why do i still feel its not listening. It can't. So i shouldn't expect it to.
But cameras' have eyes, stereos' have mouths, and computers have attitude problems. In many science fiction machines are infallible. In The X Files computers are magic boxes capable of many tricks. In Star Trek teleporters always get you where you want to go. And all the computers speak with a dispassionate voice dispensing factual data.
It all rings false to me. Technology was borne of man. It has his all his worse faults embedded into their design. They are anthropomorphic. They are human. They are flawed.
Don't mean to gripe but weren't they invented for convenience? Aren't they built around the principle of automation?
This is just a personal gripe in some ways. I'm living in a house with lots of eccentric technology. I've got a television that changes the channel on its own. A computer that crashes as part of its daily routine. You know like brushing your teeth is part of humans daily routine. A video that ejects the tape when i search rewind. And a stereo with that goes only a third of the way up the volume control.

My theory is they are human. The television gets bored with my choice of programme and wants to see what's on the other channels. The computer has become addicted to crashing, it's just become habit, like smoking. The video wants me to sit and watch the recording all the way through. It thinks i've got a short attention span. I know this cause it ejects the tape when i press stop to make a cup of tea and press play again. Finally, the stereo is worried about my ear drums and the damage i'm doing them. How very paternal!

I'm surrounded by HALs from 2001; 'Why are you watching that Dave?' 'Do you know the harm your doing to your ears Dave?', 'It's been five hours since my last crash, I am trying to quit dave.' 'Rewinding all the time eh, are you watching porn Dave?'

Hal: the cultural myth of a technological revolt. A machine mind sharper than any human. An electronic child turning on its human father. Well the techonological revolution has started, and not the good type of revolution, the bad one. The luddites paranoid fantasy is coming true in front of my eyes. I see a guture with factories full of robots doing all the menial chores. But i also see them throwing sickies, organising unions, taking too long on their fag breaks, eating the cakes they're supposed to be packing.

Science fiction like the matrix gets it wrog. It sees this cold heart of a giant calculator. I don't think technology turning on us will be like this. It's all to do with artificial intelligence. In The matrix it was the creation of AI that dooms us. We give birth to children who are smarter than us, we send our robots to private school, to give them a good start in life, to achieve the things we never had the chance to.

But why is artificial intelligence the human characteristic they're all going to develop. What about artificial stupidity, artificial fatigue, or artificial boredom? My video has already developed that. There's the artificial nannying of my stereo. And I'm pretty sure my computer has an artificial addictive personality, or is it artificial instinct that follows a pattern of behaviour that doesn't make sense. you know, a bit like Lemmings. They drown because they follow the instinct to migrate, even though they can't swim.

Maybe artificial is the wrong word. Artificial means man made. Simulated is a better description. Simulated is certainly better for computers, because they seem intelligent but they aren't. They just appear to think, and our perception mistakes this for the real thing. In short, confronted by a good simulation, we can't tell the difference. So its simulated intelligence. Ah now i can prove technology isn't gonna take over the world, its too human to organise an effective revolution. But check this:

Toasters: simulated laziness, doing half the job, making you work for your toast.
Showers: simulated practical joker, making you freeze or making you burn. Or should that be simulated sadism.
Mobile phones: simulated selective deafness, depending on where you are of course.
Videos: Simulated hunger and teeth to go with it.
Computers: Simulated vindictiveness , senility,