I, Robocrat

I note this week I sat in on an interview panel, as a civil rights advisor, for the open position of an accountant at our firm. As one of the applicant's attributes, she advertised a Master's degree, not just in accounting, but in the way it's performed as an IT function. It turned out the job qualifications weren't how a person might calculate a ledger of assets and expenses but how to perform as a project manager skilled in the successful compilation of performance measures, not to pass financial audits, but to accreditate security credentials, and to acquire passing grades mandated by legislative acts (though I'm not sure who ultimately marks the pass/fail grades - I suspect there may be no wizard behind the curtain).

It's yet one more sign the world's passed me by. There's no longer a place on any shelf for those oversized leather volumes of economic activity with the year embossed on a binding that resembles a guitar neck. The only use they serve now is to capture the ancient daily life of a parish or firm, for a specialized historian, where other than a name, date, event description and transaction amount, the lives of a corporate tribe have long vanished from the stage.

Ledgers can tell a dramatic story if there are eyes to see and ears to listen. When parish pledges in sixteenth century England, for example, no longer funded the construction of dedicated chapels and statues of saints, it meant the idea of praying to those residing in the limbo of purgatory had passed, and all of those monies and energies were secuarly freed to build an English nation able to resist the Armada.

At my company, I've nurtured and championed machines installed thirty years ago, that still outperform more modern equipment. They are German-built; all mechanical parts and electrical lines; not a chip to be found. Despite their established success and dependability, there's a plan afoot and well advanced to culminate their many years of useful service. One of our directors said in an open forum that the firm was looking for something other than dependability - the very quality I've devoted my career to achieving and maintaining. Although I've cast every bureaucratic trick from out from under my viser of spells to ward off the impending armageddon, the end draws near.

My machines are fast and dumb. Their downfall from grace is accredited to their lack of intelligence. Although, they require special skills of their own to run efficiently, those talents are no longer admired or appreciated. The men that installed them were rough and tough mechanical cowboys. Some carried, not papers, but bottles of Schnapps in their briefcases; some were 'white-tie' mechanics - those that could wear a white shirt whilst repairing a machine and rise from the job without a speck of grease upon them. Some were 'hammer' mechanics whose motto was, don't force it, get a bigger hammer; these hardy machines of case-hardened steel could withstand even the foulest of tempraments.

After work, we'd repair to a local tavern, argue till the wee hours over the best oil to apply to a chain, then take the discussion outside for resolution. Such exciting times are finished forever: there's no room for anything today that resembles even mock-agreesive behavior, even if it's borne of a deep passion not possible if you'd been otherwise debating which button to best push on a computer console control module.

Fifteen years ago, or so, I visited a factory where other long abandoned machines were made. At dusk one day, while the sunlight filtered in from a skylight, a man stood in front of a music stand upon which stood an illuminated manuscript. The craftsman slowly, expertly, carved raised arabic letters onto a steel print drum, a job that today would be programmed on a computer. There's no longer any need now for high-speed, large volume impact printers, anyway. What have we lost?

To blow off steam after finals in college, we'd drive to clay pits in the country, to shoot historical weapons we'd collected as period pieces. When you slid the bolt on a standard German Army-issue Mauser rifle, took aim and fired, the gun became an extension of your body - the entire action was elegantly bio-mechanical. It's simply a manufacturing story of a factory task well executed by the loving hands of experienced craftsmen, not the tale of a box assembled by anonymous laborers in a pristine germ-free lab.

I note the story this week of a woman who called for a cable upgrade installaion. No one came on the appointed day. When a technician arrived, two days later, he failed to complete the set-up. The next day, the company cut off the service altogether. She drove to the office. She waited two hours, only to be told the manager had left for the day. She went back the next day, hammer in hand, and smashed a keyboard, monitor and telephone. She was charged with disorderly conduct, received a 3-month suspsended sentence and a $345 fine. She said, "many people have called me a hero. But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit."

It'd be too ironic if I was complaining about technology while writing on a blog in cyber space. Yet, the anger I feel when I can't access something, or if its to slow, is of a degree I don't experience with any other usual frustration in my life. I'm not sure why that is and I know it's not healthy. Maybe it's because there's no chance I can act like a hammer mechanic with this equipment, though there are times I've come awfully close.

I'm sure glad I'll retire prior to the final destruction of my beloved machines. I suppose that's the way people felt when machines replaced artisians in the early 1800's, and trains replaced horses. They wouldn't have thought machines or trains had souls. I don't think computers have souls; I think they may be the devil. Yet those early machines and trains are the subject of much love and devotion today. I'm the last one around the firm that can relay the venerable stories of my machines - when I leave, and the machines are gone, these old dependable warhorses will possess no history to speak of and will pass unmourned unless a historian, 500 years from now, uncovers their record of unblemished dependability in the production and on-time delivery of billions of units and marvels at how that may have been possible.

Will someone love the computers that are killing my machines like I love what they're replacing? It's hard to envision. When you grow old, your way of life passes you by. You go along for the ride as much as you can and throw a hissy fit now and then when it all becomes too much. That may be all you can do, for time and tide, wait for no one.