Cybermess
Oh, to be young again and understand computers.
I’m not clueless about the cyberworld—not completely. Under the duress of losing everything I’ve confided to the machine on which I’m as dependent as a newborn child, I’ve tinkered, sometimes successfully, to clean up a mess. Said mess always drops from the sky, unannounced and unheralded, punishment the device metes out, sensing my distrust, fear, and need. I must fight back, a Quixote looking for a windmill.
My fevered brain plays host to this fraught duet each time I dig a new machine out of the bubble wrap. I’m convinced the thing won’t work, and I weigh every keystroke during setup, wondering when the betrayal will come. Because it will.
The ineffable sequence of zeroes and ones can’t remain intact forever. As with a human body whose cells suddenly multiply in grotesque disorder, a computer will crash one day for good. After all, that seed of corruption has already taken root. The brand-new machine—and I—are doomed even as I sign with UPS for the delivery.
I can’t trace this trauma to its origin. I’ve never had a computer fail out of the box, and I know—intellectually—that if I did, I could return it and get a refund. But I dread the hassle, the disappointment, and, most of all, the confirmation that I was right to withhold my trust. A lightweight mass of metal, plastic, and circuitry, which I could fling across a large room with one hand, has me at its mercy. And I allow this.
Behold the young, who confidently navigate these waters as if no carnivorous, toothy creatures swam therein, no scary inhabitants of the deep. The keystrokes that make me catch my breath in awe and anxiety don’t trouble the kids a half-century or more younger than me, who believe themselves lords of the cyberkingdom.
And why not? They take the word command at full value; when they tap a key, they expect to be obeyed. There’s something regal in that, as if the machines existed to serve them.
The geeks shall inherit the earth.