Who has not been the victim of a computer failure? In my case the day before yesterday, without going any further, Windows decided that it didn’t feel like starting up and, consequently, I had to reinstall the operating system. Surely if I ask you, you all have negative experiences attributable to the irregular functioning of a system, and even more so in users who spend many hours a day in front of the computer, whether working, informing us, communicating, playing… Neither the machines nor the software are 100% perfect.
The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) is probably the most common computer crash, the one that we have all experienced on more than one occasion. We try to boot again, if it fails we try it in safe mode, we use the system recovery tools… in short, we follow a routine that we more or less know (or we quickly document ourselves on the Internet to try to solve the problem). The solution falls somewhere between rebooting the system and buying a new PC, although fortunately the latter case is the least common.
That is the computer failure that we have to face the most. Or maybe not? Now I invite you to do a little memory and remember your last telephone communications with various services: your Internet provider, the electricity company you have contracted, the insurer of your car or motorcycle… As a general rule, if it is to contract some additional service , everything will work like a charm, but if what you want is to claim for an incorrect charge, for a failure in the service or, above all, to unsubscribe, Have they ever told you that they can’t do it at that moment because the system has crashed?
Maybe it’s not your case, and I’m really glad of it, but both in my personal experience and because of my environment and the cases that I know from friends and social networks, now the computer failure that we suffer the most is the one that affects the infrastructure on which it depends that we can unsubscribe for a service that we no longer use but that we have been paying for two or three months because, because of a crash or a system update, damn, they can’t unsubscribe us.
There is also another type of computer failure, and it is also the most common, and is the one that causes people to act in the wrong way. Just a few days ago there was a rather controversial vote in the Spanish Lower House. One of those votes in which one vote can make a difference. And a deputy was the victim of a computer failure that caused him to vote against the direction of his party’s vote. The consequence was that the voted measure went ahead thanks to the computer failure experienced by the deputy who voted well, but who suffered the consequences of a new failure of the technological platform.
I do not mention the party or the reason for the vote not to hide it, since practically everyone knows this story. I do it because in this aspect I don’t care if they are one or the other, and whether they vote for something or against it. Neither I nor this publication imply any political position, and this is important to clarify. From one end to the other of the parliamentary arch, my opinion about what happened would not change one millimeter in relation to what this text is about.
And what is it about? Well, about the weariness of seeing how human errors, malicious actions and other herbs, all typical of layer 8 of the OSI model, are masked behind a computer failure. A justification that, at this point, is more or less at the same level as the one that the dog ate the homework.
The incorrect appearance of a name in a judicial text, an error in several telematic votes, the use in a book of a text by another author, the 350 euros that my old mobile telephone operator charged me for using data while roaming, which the The last time I made rice pudding, it was bitter… it’s all the fault of a computer failure.
In certain environments it is often said that the component that fails the most in a system is usually located between the chair and the screen. And in all the cases that I have mentioned previously I put my hand in the fire because that is how it has been.
Image: getDigital
And no, with this I do not pretend that the machines are perfect and that the computer bug is a legendary creature, like unicorns or elite soccer players who can read and write (the latter is a joke, no offense). Technology fails, it fails more than it should, and a legion of engineers, programmers, technicians and other professionals work, day by day, to solve these failures and make everything work well.
And it is precisely by thinking of these professionals, of the millions of people who are behind devices, software and services, that the allusion to a computer failure seems to me not only a lie, but also a huge lack of respect. Every time someone tries to hide their error or their intentions behind a computer failure, they underestimate the work of those people and, in addition, contribute to a catastrophic vision, by a part of society, which really believes that technology is so unreliable .
You and I have suffered a computer failure, but we have also been wrong on occasion. The problem is that you and I admit it, but many others do not, and when part of these denials transcend public opinion, and/or affect the lives of other people, then they are carrying their own mistakes and/or bad intentions. And as a person who has spent more than half his life dedicated to computing, it seems to me a lack of respect and a joke that should stop now.
And I repeat the clarification that I have made before: that no one interpret this publication in a political key, because it has absolutely nothing to do with it. And I also clarify that it seems good to me to be informed about it if there is a computer failure or of any other type. In MuyComputer we publish quite a lot of news about them. Now, every stick your candle holds, and if someone has made a mistake or acted wrong, stop blaming technology, because at that time, at least for many people, is portrayed, and not especially well.
What do you think? Do you agree that every time they allude to a computer failure they are trying to fool us? Or maybe I’m just too cynical?
