This article is classified "Partly real, partly fictional"
Earth Computers are of course, as are all Galactic computers encountered
by our correspondents, a complete fraud. You need to know three things
about the terran variety of the unarmed bandit:
1) The marketing divisions of hardware and software (make no
distinction, it's all just stuff in a box) manufacturers
describe their products as electronic tools for the storage,
retrieval, and manipulation of information, capable of
zillions of calculations per second. Actually, calculation
and manipulation are correct terms. The true purpose of
these entities is the reduction of patently absurd
information into digestible "bytes" that otherwise could not
be swallowed, even by the more gullible residents of this
backward, cheap, and money-grubbing planet. Human
practitioners of this technique are referred to as
"statisticians" or, more commonly, "liars."
The difference between information gleaned from a computer
and any kind of reality can easily be demonstrated. Take a
piece of paper. Write on it. Look at it. It is a real
thing. It cannot be changed without your knowledge unless
you loose track of it, get totally wasted, or just don't
care. Put it on a shelf. Stay up all night looking at it.
Take it down. You know it's the same thing even if you
don't remember what you wrote.
This is not true of the information on a computer screen.
Where does it go when you turn it off? Even when you just
go to the refrigerator for a beer, when you come back your
text is replaced by one of those .gifs of Kathy Ireland
necessary to save your delicate and expensive video screen
from burn-in.
The subtlety of the fraud being perpetrated can easily be
demonstrated by consideration of your monthly computer-
produced MasterCard or Visa statement. The total is
impossible. There is no way you could have spent that much
money. But when you look at the individual items, some begin
to assume a vague familiarity. Others begin to seem at least
plausible, considering certain cash purchases you may have
made. And so, simply because it is "on the computer," you are
made to believe in the impossible. You go on to pay or not to
pay the backward, cheap and money-grubbing people at the bank
depending on that other computerized fraud, your checking
account.
2) There's a great old wheeze, decades old, that you can still
pull at will on the furless monkeys here, who are still always
willing to believe that they are the experimenters rather than
the subjects of experiments. The gag is called the "Turing
Test." You enter a small windowless room. One of the walls
has a little slot in it through which you can push sheets of
paper. On the other side of this partition will be a cretin
in a white coat whose purpose in life is to determine whether
or not you are a computer. Through the wall he'll yell,
"Write something in Chinese!" You may, like most of the
inhabitants, be familiar with at least one form of written
Chinese, but regardless of that just scribble down any lame
gibberish and pass it through the slot. "Aha!" hollers the
white-coated wonder. "You're not Chinese. You're a
computer!"
From that point on, the ninny will believe you are a
dependable electronic tool for the storage, retrieval, and
manipulation of information, capable of zillions of
calculations per second, rather than a hung-over liberal
arts major with a vicious sense of humor whose brain seizes
up when confronted by a goes into sign.
3) Computers are controlled by mice.