“This stupid computer isn’t working!”

The exclamation above; often followed by some form of grinding, twisting or crashing noise is one that echoes across offices across the globe.

It’s an utterance that the most tech savvy amongst us have uttered at some stage, it’s something that IT professionals deal with every day and it’s something that, for many users, defines how far a computing device can be pushed.

Calling an enlarged calculator ‘stupid’ enables even the most intelligent person to release feelings of obsolescence when confronting an object that is better at doing the most human of all functions, thinking.

Not thinking in a processing sense, a computers parameters determine its abilities, but thinking in terms of calculation, prediction and access. In all of these facets computing technology is superior to the human mind.

There is a propensity for human’s to describe things that they fail to comprehend as stupid. This approach belies an ignorance of a subject rather than a superiority.

However given the reliance of the first and second world on IT to communicate, work, shop and just live in general I would estimate that calling a computer stupid occurs at least once every second. Although the term may differ for example en Français: ‘ordinateur stupide’, Welsh: ‘cyfrifiadur dwp’ and Telugu: ‘పెద్ద కంప్యూటర్’.

If we place the universal language of computer hate aside, the fact remains that computers only operate according to the parameters we set. So unless a computer spontaneously combusts it is working according to the combination of factory settings and user activity we expose it to over time.

Computers are the products of birth and experience.

People don’t tend to blame a knife for going blunt, or a garbage bag for getting full, yet a different standard is set for objects that are given anthropomorphic qualities, the standard that is set for humans.

It’s not the computer’s fault if it can’t download another Megabyte of ‘Buxom Babes 9’. It could be that the hard drive is already full of swooning ladies with the balancing skills of a watermelon farmer on market day.

A computer, despite our expectations, is little more than an overgrown abacus.

The fault in technology is most often our own. We fail to understand limits, load computers with junk and then expect them to work as if the manufacturer just hooked up the hard drive.

Humans, strangely enough don’t work this way either.

We expect agreement with our ideas, quick service and depths of knowledge that would be impossible to recall, let alone store in one mind.

We ignore the fact that the average human is loaded with junk and then expect production line results.

The world, such as it has always been, does not allow perfection, in fact it barely allows a slap on the back and a ‘good job Bob’. Expecting anything different to come from humans or their creations is unfair not just to the creators but also to ourselves.

This doesn’t mean that we should expect less from ourselves. It just means that expecting the waiter to remember the artificial sweetener for your skim, soy, half shot, caramel latte, extra hot, extra foam might be asking a bit too much. Your waiter may have a million other things in their head, they experience the world just like you do and calling them stupid because they don’t meet your expectations does not make them so, it just makes you ignorant.