Why Is technology mean to me for no good reason?

It is never easy to re-examine one’s core beliefs, but I am now forced to question my previous disbelief in the existence of Satan. I am forced to face this nasty possibility as, from time to time, my electronic devices seem to fall under demonic possession.

Now, I should start by saying that I’m not someone with a natural animosity towards personal technology. I’m known to be completely reasonable when supermarket checkouts refuse to let me continue until I place my last purchased item in the bagging area. I patiently explain, sometimes with dramatic physical re-enactments, that in fact I placed the product directly in the center of the bagging area, or even in a bag itself.

Despite these kinds of sympathetic efforts, the technology leaves me wanting; I’m disadvantaged within the silicon-based community, and the situation has gotten so bad that it makes me think about this possibility of a malevolent presence – Beelzebub, Lucifer, the Dark Lord, whatever you want to say. ‘to call.

Let me describe the events of a recent Friday, when technology was particularly mean to me. I woke up in Chicago to find that my phone, which normally charges through the port downstairs, was no longer accepting charges from that port of entry. I didn’t think much of it, assuming I could clean up some dust or something.

Then I tried pairing it with my headphones, which it usually pairs with automatically. Nothing to do. This happens sometimes, so I tried connecting it to my backup headphones, the ones that seem to be playing music from deep in the Pacific. These devices also refused to talk to each other. I went to the phone’s Bluetooth page, and it was just a bunch of “not connected” readings.

I did what any master technologist would do. I rubbed the earbuds against my phone in a seductive circular manner that I thought might foster bonding. I put them in my ears and brushed the phone against my cheeks with a loving and gentle, but also firm, pressure. However, the phone and headphones refused to sync. We talk a lot about artificial intelligence but not enough about artificial stubbornness.

The nine circles of technology

As I rushed to the airport, my Find My app rubbed salt in the wounds by telling me that I had forgotten the headphones that my phone refused to recognize in the first place. At the airport I thought I could clean the loading port using a vacuum technique. So if you were at Midway International Airport on a Friday and a little kid asked you, “Why is that man sucking on his phone?” “, this man was me.

I boarded the plane knowing that Southwest has very reliable Wi-Fi service. But the flight attendant informed us that this time it didn’t work, because of Satan. I got home and discovered that my house Wi-Fi wasn’t working either. I fixed it by turning it off and on again, a move that shows, as Silicon Valley types would say, that I’m “tech savvy.”

At home, I had to print six documents. I had a printer that served me well until one day it decided my ink cartridges were “corrupt” and refused to continue printing. I purchased more cartridges from the printer manufacturer, but my printer was still seeing shadows in all the new cartridges – like QAnon members watching national politics.

We bought a new printer, but it’s pretentious. Asking him to print something is like applying to Harvard University. He was willing to print an essay from the journal Daedalus and an academic article on aging, but he was unwilling to print four other documents from simple newspapers and websites. Like Bartleby the Scrivener, he would prefer not to.

Break time

You may be reading this thinking that I am the problem here. I’m just a tech idiot who doesn’t know how to fix things. I am open to this possibility. The last time I went car shopping and the salesman started explaining the amazing electronic features of the new models, I was unable to follow him after 0.7 seconds. But I remind you of the central reality. Gadgets that worked for me one minute stopped working the next. I want my technology to have many abilities, but free will is not one of them.