The computer room in my secondary school had a witty poem on the wall which went:
I hate this damn computer
I wish that we could sell it
It won’t do what I want it to
Only what I tell it.
The joke (or possibly the lesson we were supposed to learn) was that computers would do exactly what you wanted them to do if only you had the appropriate knowledge to manipulate it to your advantage.
Times, I fear, have changed. Home computers are increasingly designed to be user-friendly, and telling them to do things has never been simpler. Unfortunalely, as technology grows capable of doing more and more complicated things, certain brands of computer have developed characteristic problems which can only be understood and resolved by somebody who will charge a lot of money for doing so. Thus, a more apposite poem for the 21st century:
I hate this damn computer
I’ll give it up for free
It won’t do what I tell it to
Because it’s a PC.
