Features

When my computer crashed last week I did what I always do in the face of calamity, which is to immediately admit defeat and then begin to mope nobly. When my previous computer crashed a year ago I hired a geek to extract the information from the hard drive and then I threw the entire thing away. No computer, no crash. 

Life can be deliciously simple sometimes. My wife thought it was a bit of a drastic solution, but the computer was almost a year old anyhow, and probably obsolete, though it did have a pleasing, retro 2002 look to it. 

This time though, getting a new computer was not an option. I dread calling tech support because they always ask so many pesky questions, like what kind of computer I’m using. Is it too much to ask that these people know everything? 

The first thing he asked was what operating system I’m running. By some quirk of luck, I knew that one, and I started to feel as if I might actually have some mastery of this situation. I’d breezed right through the questions about my name and telephone number and I was clearly poised for great things. Until he asked if I had any hubs or routers between the computer and the modem. That one stalled me out. It’s certainly possible. I mean, there are a lot of wires and cords under the desk. And Cheerios as well. Yup, lots of Cheerios down there, though I do understand that these have no data processing function of their own. 

Eventually we ascertained that I either do or I don’t have hubs and/or routers, and then he dropped the bomb on me. 

“We’re going to have to do a Power Cycle,” he said.  

I was crestfallen; this was unmitigated disaster. I had plans for the day, plans for actual face-to-face contact with actual face-possessing human beings. But now, clearly there wouldn’t be time, what with the Power Cycle and all. 

“I want you to reach behind your modem,” he said. “There’s a button that says ‘on/off’ and I want you to press it.”  

I followed his commands precisely, knowing that any small deviation on my part had the potential to lead to accidental global thermonuclear war. That’s just the power of computers, and I’m a man who can respect that.  

“After you turn the modem off, wait 10 seconds and turn it back on.” 

I did that. 

“Try it now,” he said. “Is your computer working now?” 

I called tech support for that? It worked of course, but did we have to get all techno and give it a name like Power Cycle? What do they call it when I swat the screen with the back of my hand—a digital-pixel realignment maneuver? 

In general I tend to use psychology to solve technological problems. If you act cool, like you simply don’t care, the problematic device will lose interest in tormenting you. Lately the remote control for my stereo has been less than helpful, so I end up mashing the play button until my knuckle aches. (Why I need a remote for my stereo isn’t a bad question—I’m never more than six feet from the thing, and besides, it lives right next to the cookies, which makes going there fairly pleasant.) The more I fret though, the more obstinate the stereo becomes. Better to sneak up on the thing. Oh my, is that a remote control in my hand? Not that I care one way or the other, but if I should happen to casually press play, I wonder what might happen? Works every time—never let the machine see you sweat. 

The problem, I think, is that even the simplest of modern technologies have far outstripped my ability to understand them. I once heard Bill Gates say that he wants computers to be as commonplace and non-threatening as toasters. What technophobe grandma would say “I’ve just never figured out how to use these newfangled toaster things; I’ll always prefer using a granite slab heated over a coal fire.” Gates’s dream sounds like a hell of a goal, until I admit that I don’t fundamentally understand the toaster. I get the general principal: Bread goes in, heat comes on, toast comes out. Voila, we have ze magique. But how it all happens is a mystery. I learned about electricity in that high school physics class where we diagrammed ohms and volts and learned that a lever is really the same as a pulley which is really the same as an inclined plane. But c’mon. Toast is coming out of my wall socket? Now that’s crazy talk. 

The comfortable balance, for me, is that I don’t ask too many questions or make unreasonable demands. Don’t I get toast more often than not? Consider it a blessing. Isn’t my e-mail account up and running at least half the time? I’m a lucky, lucky man. I try to think of these modern complexities not as providing more things that can break, but as offering more potential solutions. After all, you can’t Power Cycle two sticks together and have any hope of getting fire, now can you? 

Zac Unger is an Oakland firefighter who lives in Berkeley. His book Working Fire: The Making of an Accidental Fireman will be published by Penguin on March 8. He had to send this column twice; the first was lost to—yes—a computer error.