06/02/08

Machine Psychology

I walk in the bathroom and I can’t believe what I see – someone has plugged in the new electric toothbrush again! How can they do this to me?

I am trying very hard to teach the batteries in the toothbrush how full they have to charge themselves up, which means I have to let them go completely empty before I charge them up again. Then do that 2 more times.

I’m doing OK until some bozo waltzes into the bathroom and plugs the damn thing in again. How is the toothbrush supposed to learn anything if people keep giving it more juice?

I find it kind of amazing that nowadays we have to not only teach our children and dogs, but also our batteries. 

It’s too much responsibility if you ask me.

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But batteries aren’t the only electrical appliances that need psychological training nowadays. More and more electrical things are starting to have computers or act like computers.

And once you hit that point, there’s no going back.

Because computers don’t work logically. As long as a machine is purely mechanical or electrical, things are fine. Logic rules the world.

But computers are another thing. They have moods. They’re going to work when they want to and when they don’t, just forget the whole thing. You can try shutting them down and hope that when you start them up again, they’ll be in a different mood. Other than that, you just have to wait.

Since I work on a computer all day, I am used to that way of thinking. If things aren’t going well, I turn everything off, go have a cup of coffee, maybe take a walk, and come back later to try again.

But people who work with machines which are still mostly logical (like my husband who works with cars) aren’t used to thinking this way. Take this thing that happened last week at our house:

We’re sitting there and a good movie is starting. I accidently hit some button on the remote control and the picture on the TV suddenly gets smaller. This is not a huge disaster since the TV is 42 inches to begin with. So I figure, let’s watch this movie and then worry about it.

My husband, on the other hand, wants me to fix the picture and then watch the movie (the more electrical appliances act like computers, the more it is I who takes care of them in our house). I play with it for a bit and don’t get anywhere, so I say let’s just worry about it later.

He can’t believe I don’t care that I have broken the TV, so finally I try harder to fix it. I get it to the point where it’s OK on some channels but not others, and the way it’s working doesn’t make any sense at all. I tell him that I’ll have more time tomorrow so I’ll work on it then.

That’s what I said that evening, because I didn’t think my husband would believe the truth, which was that the TV was just not in the mood to do any better with the picture. I knew the behavior, I had seen it many times in computers. I knew if I just left that TV alone for awhile it would start to feel better and everything would be OK again.

The next morning we got up, turned on the morning news, and the picture was back to normal on all channels.

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VOCABULARY: Plug in: kytkeä, Battery: paristo, Charge: ladata, Appliance: kodinkone, Mood: mieliala or tuuli (‘hän on hyvällä tuulella’)