Look out, here she comes

Will someone explain to me – in a way I can, maybe, understand – what AI involves? I'm too technologically challenged even to fathom the very concept...the possibilities. I'm probably more confused about this than I was when someone tried to explain how a facsimile (fax) machine worked back in the 1980s. I still don't understand completely. That’s a lie. I still don’t understand at all. It's fallen into the category of 'things I don't need to know'.

There are so many things on that list and a host of others I haven’t yet discovered that I don't know. From the outset in any struggle towards my understanding of a thing that does things, I'm woefully at a loss. It's routinely a short time from my ‘wanting to know’, to my total capitulation to the fact I never will understand; and my laissez faire allocation of yet another mystifying thing to my list of now-imponderables.

I'm not a stupid person. I can acquit myself decently at a good number of things.

Though not given to braggadocio, I might even claim I’m expert in some of them. My tipping point comes in the form of things I can't, and never could, figure out their workings exactly. There’s not a technological tool (and, in my mind, the goings-on inside something as arcane a wristwatch qualifies) that doesn’t eschew my presence. Some of them just up and don’t work, coercing me into the familiar, and losing, battles in my brain.

But only for so long. 'Why should I care?' inevitably overtakes the quest for knowledge. This isn't just laziness; it's just wholesale acceptance of my obvious misalignments, be they physical or mental. And not a day goes by that I'm not reminded of something that’s beyond me. Many a day I discover yet another thing to add to my list of things I'll never understand. On a particularly fruitful day, I’ll discover a few.

On reflection, since I've started and stopped writing this tale every day for the last three, there is some degree of laziness involved.

None of this surprises me now, nor has it ever. I am a walking klutz factory. If something can be done incorrectly, or go wrong (often against all odds), you’ll likely find me somehow associated with the steaming mess. I am the harbinger of dysfunction when it comes to computers or printers or (long ago) fax machines, electric metronomes, etc. and, if I stop to think about it, it’s pretty much all things electrical that have to ‘do things’…the things where one bit has to join or fasten or work or co-operate with another (and, often, many more things). A printer that’s asked to spit out just one copy suddenly seizes, the paper jams, it prints things I have not typed. My friend’s electric metronome, used for keeping the piano beat - working just fine for her - refused to budge when my fingers began tapping the keys; but jumped to life the second I left the room. Same with computers. Were a technician to come and help me at work, when my computer malfunction, I would automatically leave the cubicle. It’s the only chance the poor machine has. Usually it’s a simple fix, leaving me feeling a simpleton.

Having walked this earth a very long time, I’ve had sufficient experience to claim that few people have ever believed me or taken it seriously when I divulge my negative effect on things technical. 'Just your imagination.' and 'That’s ridiculous' are phrases with which I’m very familiar. In these episodes, when I’ve cleared out and things work again, 'I can’t believe that' or 'That’s really weird” usually follow.

I long ago accepted this oddity of mine. It complements all the other ones.

Did I mention that the time on watches starts going backwards when strapped to my wrist? Sometimes it just stops.

Like that.