I have what I believe is a good relationship with my microwave. I put food into it, press a few buttons, it cooks it and when done it chimes and displays a friendly message “enjoy your meal.”
Quite pleasant. It creates a sort of man-machine bond, but only to the extent that we each know our roles: I’m the man, it’s the machine and it is at my demand.
Now if there’s one thing that I dislike it is changing the clocks in Spring and Fall. One or two would be fine, but for some reason everything has a clock on it. We have close to 20 of them from coffee-makers, stoves, TVs, PC’s, wall clocks and of course my friendly, yet subservient microwave.
Many appliances need their clocks to be manually updated. Some appliances, like my microwave, are “smart” enough to know when it is time to change and they spring forward or fall back appropriately. My PC has received a software update [1], but my appliances have not.
In a bizarre twist on good intentions the definition of appropriate has changed, and this year my smart appliances will change at the wrong time. This year there is a new reality and the time changes a few weeks earlier in the Spring and a few weeks later in the Fall.
What does it mean? Last year, I did nothing; my “smart” appliance just changed themselves. This year I will get to change these clocks manually four times. The first time will be next weekend when the time changes, as they don’t know of the new reality. The next time will be in April, when they think the time does change, and I will have to set them back. And, this will happen again twice in the Fall.
But wait, there’s more. This will go on for every year until I replace those appliances.
Russell Baker put it this way:
“The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.”
Now, I’m not generally one for conspiracy theories but what better way to drive consumers to replace their appliances than to force them to face this looming defeat.
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