Imagine:
In the Long, Long Ago, some of us think everybody understood the truth about computers. I mean, really understood them. Nobody ever bothered to mention how they worked inside, because we all just knew. Obviously, it’s electricity, bits, and program code. Simple enough.
And then, I’m not sure how it happened, but I guess maybe folks got a bit confused. They didn’t study up on the things, or something. And everybody was using them, and nobody cared how they worked, anyhow. Eventually a lot of the knowledge got lost, because the darn things just worked so well. I mean, nobody had to pay attention to them, so nobody really had to learn anything about them.
So when the Electricologists came along, it wasn’t really extremely difficult for them to start convincing people. And yeah, I know you think I sound like a conspiracy theorist, or something. Whatev. We all believe what we believe. But here’s what I believe, and my research backs me up:
The guy we usually consider the first Electricologist, William, got himself appointed at the University and started to study computers. No big deal, just a regular old appointment to study computer science. Of course, nobody was really studying computer science at that point, so it was sort of a big deal–the University probably felt like it was funding pioneering work, so they didn’t spend too much time investigating what William was doing. He actually called it something else, though… electricology, I think it was.
He published a lot of books on electricology, but of course the first one was the most important. It basically started out with: “There is no such thing as electricity, so the solutions of electricology lie elsewhere.” Sounds pretty ridiculous to me, but this is the stuff that you probably just take for granted nowadays. Remember that the word electricology, when broken down into its component Latin parts means “The study of electricity.” So we started out with a study of electricity that said it doesn’t exist. 🙂 Pretty clever, there, Will.
Instead of electricity, he hypothesized (but never really proved–he didn’t even have the equipment to do the tests with) that a computer was controlling itself independently, by means of a “ghost.” That is, the Ghosts were running the computer. This was a wild theory, of course, and many people believed it opened up the door to a whole new way of looking at computers.
Time goes on and (yes, I know that a lot of you studied electricolgy and I’m totally abbreviating stuff, whatev) various of his students “proved” that the Ghosts were running the machine. Usually by performing experiments with the keyboard and seeing how the computer would react. Basically, as far as I’m concerned, the only thing they conclusively proved is that the computer would stop working if you did enough stupid things to it.
So great. So now we have Ghosts, they’re running the machines. So, what do we do with that information? Well, obviously, we’ve got to do something with it, right? Well, gee, let’s help people with their computers! After all, people need help with their computers. Sometimes the things mysteriously break and nobody can really fix them. Before electricology, people were just throwing them in the junkyard, for the most part. Some people were hacking them apart, but mostly they went to the junkyard.
The first way that was devised was the Free Click. This was basically harmless: the electricologist would click randomly with the mouse, responding to the “ghost” of the machine with what it believed were the proper responses. Surprisingly enough, this did result in some cures. Not a majority, but some. There was a sort of a “science” developed around Free Click, which involved interpreting the symbols of the computer as the fundamental errors that had been made in the creation of the machine. That is, they had decided that the basic problems of machines happened when the Ghost and the Machine first came together (when the machine was “made”), and that all future problems were just representations of those basic problems.
I’m not saying that’s not true, by the way. Although I might say it’s a bit vague. 🙂
Some people were disappointed by the success rate; others were just eager for a quicker fix. The Free Click could take months or years, and had no guarantee of success. We live in a quick-fix society — people wanted to just be able to press a button and have the thing get better.
So along jumps in a new science, electriciatry, which, from the Latin, basically means “the doctoring of electricity.” Electriciatry actually has a history before this (which is very interesting), but I don’t want to get sidetracked in the story, here.
The first “advance” of electriciatry was the “boost.” Here’s the theory of the “boost”: “When the Ghost goes wrong, nothing can really be done about it. However, we can make the symptoms less bad.” (Note, once again, a “science” that starts out denying its basic purpose.) The way that you make the symptoms “less bad” in electriciatry is to “dampen” them. Usually, you dampen them by destroying some part of the computer, so that that part of the computer can no longer do anything (which also prevents it from doing the things you didn’t like). And this has been the basic premise of all electriatric treatments. (This might sound ridiculous to some of you, but look it up, it’s true!)
OK, but back the the “boost,” right. Basically, you give the computer slightly more juice that it can normally deal with. This then causes it to be less troublesome to the user, which seems to “cure” the symptoms. Many people were quite happy with this–they didn’t necessarily want a working computer, they just wanted one that didn’t irritate them as much.
In reality, the boost fries parts of the computer in such a fashion that they can never work again. But yes, yes, that’s controversial and we’ll go on to some other topic here. 🙂 (And for those of you who say that the boost isn’t used anymore–I just read an article the other day saying that they have a “new, safe boost” that they feel is OK to use on machines in modern times…)
There were other forms of the boost, too, involving turning down the juice, shaking the box until it dislodged something and changed the behavior, and heating the room outside the box to create the same effect. There were others, too, but those were some of the most common.
Of course, the boost in all its forms did eventually come to be looked on as barbaric. And, the theory of the “ghost” wasn’t sounding quite scientific enough.
This resulted in the two largest “advances” of electriciatry. First: The Ghost is not just something that is hard to see and mysteriously breaks, it’s actually composed of various Energies which can be measured in the lab. Second: All problems of computers come from an imbalance of Energies in the Ghosts.
Well, voila! That seems useful — all they had to do was figure out how to balance the Ghost Energies, and they’d have the quick fix that everybody was looking for.
This led to the development of the first Ghost Virus, which is just like any other virus that you’ve run into, but specially approved by the Computer Decency Agency for prescription application to broken computers. Nobody actually fully understands them, but they don’t really have to, because no electriciatrist does a Ghost Energy lab test before prescribing these Viruses. (Once again, you don’t have to take that from me, check up on it!) They just know that they affect Ghost Energies in a certain way.
Of course, standard street viruses affect the Ghost Energies in the same way, but hey…
Many, many people report that the viruses do marvelous things for their computers, and for the computers of their friends and family. They save machines that would otherwise have been junked, they really change the course of a machine’s existence. They’re the latest thing on the cover of every technology magazine, they’re the standard, accepted way of fixing everything.
Except basically, really, they’re viruses. They interfere with the computer’s ability to function. They hype it up, or they distort it, or they destroy important parts of the system. That’s why they create the visible effect that you see–because they are altering the way the computer fundamentally works. Of course you’re going to see some change!
I could go on and on about the various “side effects” that the Ghost Viruses have, and how they’ve all eventually been outlawed only to be replaced with a “new, safe Ghost Virus.” But that’s easy to look up for yourself.
What’s really important here is that the Ghost Viruses are just another part of a long history of ineffective solutions to “dampen” a computer.
The funny part of it is, not only does nobody really understand computers, they’ve all forgotten that there was a programmer to begin with! Even the electronics engineers themselves hardly understand the components that they’re sometimes physically fixing. They just sort of know that if you change a few of the connections around, things start working again. 🙂
And nowadays, to even mention the idea of a programmer, I’d be labeled as a “religious nut” by some people. Some people can accept the idea that the computer itself runs in some other way, but the idea that somebody actually programmed something… nah, forget it. 🙂
And yet, when you realize how a computer really works, and you realize that it only does what the programmer says, everything becomes actually fixable. That’s why I believe what I believe–because it works. It actually fixes computers.
But people haven’t seen a computer be really fixed in so long, they’ve forgotten what it’s like. And the electriciatrists make so much money “dampening” the symptoms that it’s become one of the larger industries in the world.
But trust me, I’m not crazy. 🙂 All of this, you can look up for yourself, if you just know where to look.
Max Kanat-Alexander 