Why I don't like computers
For years, I've been known as being 'a computer guy'. I know computers; I have a pretty good understanding of how they work. For as long as I've had a job that involves sitting in front of a computer, I've been the guy that people turn to first when they have a problem with their own.
I don't just look at computer hardware when I'm in the market to buy a new one; I like to know what is going on in the industry. I'm interested in who is manufacturing chips with different processes, and what it means for the future of CPUs and GPUs, mobile vs desktop devices and so on. I'm really interested in what the current shortage of global chip manufacturing is going to mean for things like computers, consoles, phones and cars over the coming years.
I'm very interested in what Apple are doing with their new ARM-based M1 processors, and what it means for the future of Mac computers.
Obviously, I'm interested in computers.
But that doesn't mean that I like computers.
I find them constantly annoying. I get very irritated by badly designed software, or unexpected changes to software I'm used to using. I consider time spent fixing my own computer problems to be an irritating waste of my time - let alone when I'm fixing other people's problems for them, because either (professionally) the IT department's helpdesk makes it more work for people to speak to them than to me or (personally) because people don't have someone better to turn to for help.
Relevant XKCD; (there's always a relvant XKCD about tech issues)
That said - I'm aware that a lot of the time, its likely to be less work for me to fix the problem than for someone to try to fix the problem themselves.
This led to a minor epiphany a couple of weeks ago, when my wife asked me why I sometimes groan about how I don't like computers when I spend so much time using them or learning about how to use them or jump into action when people have trouble with them that I must clearly love them; I must be joking.
But I don't like computers.
I like the things that, as a tool, they let me do. This is something that Apple realised early on - people don't care about a computer, but if they care about writing a novel and a Macbook helps them do it, they will care about their Macbook. So - I can use computers to keep a journal that I can access from my laptop, my phone, or any other thing with an internet connection. I can plug in my guitar into my laptop and record a song where I play four different guitar parts (with their own separate effects/EQ etc.) over the top of a beat that I've sampled and chopped up. I can take a bunch of videos and edit them together to make a reasonably professional-looking montage. I can use a computer do the kind of statistical analysis that companies will pay consultancy fees of hundreds of pounds an hour for - or I can design an Excel spreadsheet in an afternoon that will turn a regular, boring, repetitve job that someone spends 3-4 days on every month into a click of a button and a couple of minutes of Excel whizzing away all by itself while they can get a coffee. 1
But I don't like computers.
I do like helping people though. Especially when I know that I can do something with a little bit of hassle that will take a lot more hassle away from their lives.
And I have a particular kind of fondness for my computer - the one that I've set up over the seven years or so since I bought it (with the plan of it lasting no more than 5 years...), which is full all the stuff and tools that I've collected over the 20 years or so since I first bought my own computer with my own money. Or at least, I used to like it - before it started freezing up randomly every so often for reasons I don't quite understand, and is asking me to install an operating system upgrade thats going to break a bunch of expensive software 1 if I do, but probably going to stop working properly with my phone if I don't. (As you might be able to tell, I've been going off it a bit lately...)
But I don't like computers.
What I realised more recently is that what I don't like is generally about the software side of things, rather than the actual computers. I don't particularly care about hardware - to be honest, the way that a bunch of on/off microswitches somehow turns into a music sequencer, or word processor, or an HD copy of the Star Wars trilogy is still a mystery to me - essentially magic. Something in between the switches, gates and Boolean logic and the C/Ruby/VBA programming language, something that I don't understand is happening.
And at the "top" end of it all is a bunch of software, written by people I don't know for reasons I don't understand - but with implications that I don't like. (For example; the Excel function that works fine in the Windows version but didn't get added to the Mac version for several years. Or a wrinkle in the way Excel works that means exactly the same sum gives different answers on a Mac vs a PC. Or the way that games are increasingly built around a susbcription business model. Or the way that online services increasingly involve giving up personal data/privacy to fund an advertising-based business.)
So, next time you talk to your 'friend who likes computers' about something computer-related, please bear in mind that you're probably not really doing them a favour by giving them an interesting computer-problem to solve. Especially if you think of them as the kind of person who "likes computers" more than they like people. Because if they are anything like me, you might well be getting things backwards.
