I'm sorry, Dave, you're endangering the mission.
As computers the size of refrigerators gained prominence in the ’50s or so, it became apparent that these things can replace the ever-loving hell out of people. Are you really going to have some dwezil show up to work drunk and tally a bunch of numbers for minimum wage when you can get a computer to do it, free?
I think not.
The fear of computers reached its apex with “2001: A Space Oddyssey,” a classic 1969 Kubrick film wherein a super-advanced computer named HAL goes apeshit and takes over a space shuttle. If you haven’t seen the film, turn off this computer, go rent it, watch it, and log back on. It’s that good. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here. Now scoot.
Back? Wasn’t bad, was it? OK, the paranoia wasn’t as well-founded as it seemed — turns out artificial intelligence didn’t quite make it to the point that a voice-recognizing conversationalist, chess master, lip-reading computer prone to bouts of jealously ever saw the light of day — though I like to think that one exists in prototype form.
The other thing about computers you should have gathered from the movie is that computers are hulking masses of wires and blinking lights. Sometime, on computer’s road from punch card-reading monstrosity to slim media center, of the color of your choice and emblazoned with an apple logo, we’ve lost the foreboding mess of flashing lights.
Well, some of us have. Here in the Spartan Daily, we have things called Dells, and do they have tangled wires and flashing lights?
I'm sorry, Dave, opening Word would jeopardize the mission.
Yeah baby, you better believe it. Our Dell monoliths may as well have been called HALs. Anyone with access to a bank of public computers may relate, methinks. While, sadly, the flashing lights are not as prominent in this picture as they are in real life, you can certainly see the mess of wires, protected from fiendish students who would run away with mice and wires.
Situation: “This computer over here has no mouse – thus, I shall steal this other computer’s mouse. Ack, it is a plastic cage. Defeat. I do not understand that these black cages easily break.”As performers, you grow to love the Dell monolith. Not nearly as unreliable as its reputation, it nevertheless has plenty of that “Animal House,” Bluto party-animal wildcard quality.
Opening Word is too LAME. I'm gonna drink this Jack instead. Louie Louie!
You’ll be researching a story, or checking names, and suddenly, the Dell 9000 decides you’re boring as hell. Solution: crash Firefox and check out of the newsroom, in search of a brew.
These are, admittedly isolated incidents. Usually, the Dells run like champs, strenuously upholding all the inadequacies Microsoft has seen fit to bless us with, and continuing to run consistently much better than this train wreck of a Dell notebook I’m typing on.
They have the added bonus of reminding us of our roots by being monolithic in shape, featuring blinking lights, and messes of wires. When these showed up on the scene, they were a breath of fresh air — I’d felt like a real wimp typing stuff on apples for the last two years.
Tags: 2001: a space odyssey, Bluto, computers, Dell, SJSU, Spartan Daily
