I don’t really know what made me think of this the other day. I was wandering around the internet and reading some of Ann Coulters racist, bigoted, mean-spirited conservative writings. Why? Well, how can you argue against something the other side says if you don’t pay attention to it and try to understand it. It’s easy to blow something off because it doesn’t jive with your own philosophy, and that usually makes reading it offensive and difficult. But it’s better to be educated in your dislike. Then at least you can debate it intelligently.
So how do I go from that to religion and computers. Who knows, there’s no rhyme or reason to my mental wanderings. Just ask my husband about the time we were quietly driving down the highway each lost in our own thoughts and I suddenly blurted out “I wonder why there is water inside a coconut.” Of course, I figured it out after thinking about it for awhile… but it didn’t lessen the absurdity of the moment as far as he was concerned. Even though it made perfect sense to me… he just hadn’t been in on the thought trail that led to that question.
But again, I digress.
Ann Coulter’s offensive arguments made me think of how people debate things, and how belief systems are often based on a complete absence of knowledge on the alternative point of view. And the most obvious example of that is religion. Pure and illogical belief in something intangible and untestable. And that kind of belief is dangerous and often vicious. Because people have no tangible method to prove their argument, it erupts into a case of “Because I believe so!” And when you attack someone’s belief structure, it becomes viewed as a personal attack rather than a philosophical one.
And thus I am led to computers… or rather computer systems. Mac vs PC specifically.
I’ve never slagged Macs, even though I never owned one until last year. I have on the other hand constantly slagged PC’s… even though I’ve owned them and worked (fought) with them for almost 30 years (from the first Tandy 1000). I did have a chance to play with one of the early Apple II computers back in the 80’s and it was the first time I’d ever seen a colour window or a mouse. And I never saw one again for a long, long time… until Microsoft finally figured out how to do both much later.
Maybe that’s where it all started. Maybe Microsoft was scared of the new computer and started a bit of a Holy War
against it back then…and it just continued. I don’t know, but what I do know is that somehow we got snookered into using a system that has twists and turns that punish you when you press the wrong button or type the wrong command. And then you must repent all your sins and reformat…yet again. Seems a bit like a confusing faith based system…. “If I just do XYZ, I’ll be saved and can get on with my life again until I make the next mistake and must repent yet again…”
And yet, with all that pain and suffering built on one operating system, why don’t more people change? Is the Mac viewed as a pagan religion? One that offers happiness and freedom because theirs is a friendly God that offers solutions? Or is the Mac a Godless religion with a leader who nurtures friendship to all and acceptance? It must be since the Mac has altered its architecture to allow the PC to operate within its confines, while the reverse is not true.
I think people are afraid of what they don’t understand. Afraid that they made a wrong choice and that it’s too late to change operating systems. And that fear manifests itself as derision and contempt towards something they haven’t taken the time to investigate. We are led to believe that our software won’t work. We are led to believe that there are no alternatives to the software we are used to. We are led to believe that it’s too difficult to switch. Let me tell you, if my 70 year old mother can do it…anyone can do it! Many software titles are available in both Mac and PC language. Many alternative software applications exist for the Mac that run faster, smoother and will even import the information from the former PC programs. But fear is larger than life and it is human nature to give in to fear. Fear of the unknown. But fear of the familiar unknown is apparently more comfortable than fear of the new unknown.
People get comfortable in their frustrations. After-all, they would have to find something new to complain about if they switched to something that offered less difficulty. People just love to complain and this would mean that they would have to find a new outlet for their need to gripe.
As I said, I never slagged Macs even though I didn’t have one. I knew people with Macs, intelligent people. The Marine Station I spent time at had Macs… and the people there were intelligent. Artists and musicians used Macs… and they did some amazing things. So there had to be something to this. And yet, at a friends house, her daughter was trying to connect her computer to the television to play a slide show, and the grandfather snarked out “Well, what do you expect, it’s a Mac!” When I made the switch, all sorts of people said “Are you crazy!?!?”
Why? Because they’ve succumbed to the belief that only a PC will get them through the day to day world of business and science. And I’m here to say, that simply isn’t true. And I can also say that in a year and a half of living with two Macs, I’ve not had to reformat a computer once…..I’ve shed no tears over them, and that’s worth more than anything I can think of.
Apparently I’m not the only person to think this way (although I am an atheist). In the writing of this I found the following:
Umberto Eco, the Italian semiologist, compared Macs and PCs to the two main branches of the Christian faith: Catholics and Protestants. The Mac is Catholic, he wrote in September 1994. It is “cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the Kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed.”
The Windows PC, on the other hand, is Protestant. It demands “difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: A long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.”
My computer system is a benevolent computer system, one that doesn’t make me pay for my transgressions… and for that reason I believe that my Mac is atheistic, moving through time and evolving as its users find new ways to push its limits and test its abilities. I think if more people made the switch, the world would be a happier place and we would evolve at a pace that we decide, not one that The Gates dictates.
Of course, there is Steve Jobs at the helm. Maybe it is a cult…I can live with that.
Have I mentioned that I love my Mac?
Shut up and pass the purple kool-aid!