[Note: This post is intended to be at least slightly humorous and not intended to be taken entirely seriously.]

Every once in a while I am called upon to help people with various technical issues involving electronics. While I am not a programmer at all, I consider myself at least a reasonably skilled user of technology, acquired by virtue of being a fairly quick learner and having used a wide variety of technologies over the course of my life in a reasonably systematic way. When I am called upon to help people (usually those who are older) with handling technologies like phones and computers, I ponder the fact that the problems of computers and other technologies are not always very straightforward. Getting such things to work, and work consistently, is more akin to magic than it is to science sometimes, especially for the regular user (and perhaps even for the designers as well).

Magic, of course, is merely that sort of power or aspect of existence that is not understood. To children, a great deal of life is magical, making them think that adults are far more powerful than we really are. Animals likewise live in a world full of magic, including the magic that allows food to come from can openers and fridges based on the power of their “owners.” Yet even adults, especially those who are older, find themselves living in a world of magic used effortlessly and gracefully by their children and grandchildren and younger coworkers and friends, a world that might seem a bit alien to them when they find themselves unable to do simple tasks like receive inbound phone calls or open music from e-mails. Those who are able to use such technology must appear on some level to be like wizards with a mastery of some dark arts.

Yet even those of us who are at least reasonably skilled at technology are aware that technology itself is a very dark sort of artifact. I joke around with other people when I help them out with their technical problems that I have come to exorcise the demons from their phone or their computer, but many of the people I help seem to take me at my word, as if they believe their technologies are so perverse as to be actually possessed. To some people, the existence of technology and the inevitable bugs that result from it are proof (if any proof were needed) of the existence of demonic forces that require an immense degree of skill to deal with. I tell others that if I were an exorcist I wouldn’t work for such modest wages, but I’m not sure that others entirely believe me.

So, the next time your computer has problems, perhaps it would be better to ponder the fact that technology is so baffling and complicated that there are bound to be problems. Anything designed by large numbers of human beings is going to have problems with it, and anything that tries to do as much as we ask our technologies to do is not going to do them all perfectly. No technology can be better than its creator, after all. If that thought experiment does not help, at least then you call in tech support and watch them seek to go in a step-by-step manner to solve all of the obvious potential problems before dealing with the more serious glitches, at least then you might be able to appreciate the act as something more than a mere exorcism of the demons of the machines we have come to depend on so much in our daily lives.