Real life | 14 January 2012

Is it too much to ask for the machines in my life to stop ordering me about? Am I reaching for the stars in wanting to be loosely in control of my car, my phone and my laptop, rather than me being at their beck and call?

I’m not talking about the odd message telling me a battery is low or the petrol is running out. I’m talking about them treating me like a despised underling. The other day the laptop decided to kick ten bells out of me for no reason whatsoever. I did everything it asked from the second I switched it on. There was, as usual, a new version of Mozilla Firefox that it was desperate to download. Then it wanted to run a security scan, so I clicked the ‘scan now’ button — I’ve learnt not to provoke it by trying to ‘scan later’ — and let it rummage around looking for viruses until it declared itself 100 per cent satisfied.

Then it went quiet. So I started to get some work done. I’d been typing for two hours when it suddenly informed me that it was ‘shutting down now to install updates’. My screen went blank, my work was wiped and I was left weeping and trembling. ‘Please, please, no!’ I wailed, as I powered the computer back on and looked for my file. But there was to be no mercy. Autosave had mysteriously auto-turned-itself-off. I used to entertain notions that something I was doing was producing these misfortunes. But I no longer believe I have any control. The laptop wants vengeance. It is deeply bitter. I’m not sure what’s eating the Volvo, however.