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Are computers writing human programs?

Posted in Technology on May 22, 2008 at 10:58 am

Silly me. I have been living under the illusion that I told the computer what to do but recently the balance of power has started to shift as machines start asserting their authority and take their first tentative steps in trying to communicate with their human peripherals.

Driving along yesterday I was “told” by the car that the Navigation CD-Rom was unreadable, “NAVIGATION CD UNREADABLE” and no further driving instructions would be offered until I sorted out the problem. I was then “told” to arrange a service for my car , “ARRANGE SERVICE” - the message appeared on the dashboard (with a flashing spanner icon just in case I was having trouble understanding the concept of a service) and refused to show any other information for a while. Then, shortly afterwards the car bleeped up and told me to fill up with diesel right away, “REFILL FUEL NOW”.

I stopped off at the petrol station and decided to get a few snacks for the kids but the credit card machine was on a break and refused to accept my card, “CARD REFUSED”, the cash machine outside told me it didn’t like the look of me and would not be issuing any cash to me today, “NO CASH” - fortunately I managed to scrabble some cash together and make the purchase.

This morning when I got to work, the computer would not let me logon telling me “ACCESS DENIED” - “You must change your password immediately, you have been warned previously to do this and have refused so now buddy I am withdrawing all your computing rights until you do something about it.” - I thought I managed the technology around here but apparently there is a higher virtual authority at work. Oh, and my email box is being filled with messages telling me tersely that my email is getting full, “Mailbox FULL” - so I better get that sorted out too.

I badly need a coffee but the vending machine told me it was out of cups and refuses to give me a coffee, even though I could easily have manually placed a cup at the appropriate place. The machine now just says “REPLACE CUPS”. Even the printer has started sending me email communications saying “REPLACE TONER” and “PAPER EMPTY”.

My laptop and mobile phone are connected together using Bluetooth and every now and then I see a little blue flash between them - are they chatting? Perhaps they are getting fed up with me or planning a new set of simple instructions for me as I now seemingly act as their drone.

These short sequential sets of instructions I am starting to receive from computers telling me to “do this, then that, if this happens then do that otherwise do this” - sound frighteningly familiar. Twenty five years ago I was typing similar stuff into a computer using a language called Basic. The computer would do pretty much what it was told and follow my instructions without question (mostly) - now it feels as if the shoe is on the other foot.

All these years of technology development and humans are becoming peripherals - or should that be huripherals?