Kirk Hiner's

"When thinking differently just isn't different enough."

Rise of the Robots
or, Yeah, I've Got Your Human Interface Device Right Here, Pal

By Kirk Hiner

This September, Megan, a former girlfriend of mine, is going to get married. The wedding will take place near Seattle, where Megan now lives, and she told me she'd try to schedule the wedding on a weekend when the Seahawks are at home so I ca take in a game while I was there.

My coworkers find it extremely odd, first of all, that an ex-girlfriend would invite me to her wedding, and downright baffling that she'd schedule the day to accommodate my affinity for the Seattle Seahawks. I have what I'm now told is a bizarre habit of remaining friends with most of my ex-girlfriends, and what are friends good for if not to make it possible for you to see your favorite football team?

Sadly, I won't be able to attend the game...I mean the wedding...this fall. Fear not, though, as I will get to see the Seahawks play in Cincinnati in October through another friend; this time, not an ex-girlfriend. Although, I do like the idea of having an ex-girlfriend in each of the cities that house a professional football team against whom the Seahawks are likely to play. That's a lot of ex-girlfriends, though, and I'm not sure how my wife will handle expansion teams.

This article is not about the Seahawks, however. It's about Microsoft. Well, my attitude towards Microsoft. And no, I'm not blind to the irony that it was Microsoft money that kept the Seahawks in Seattle a few years back. Regardless, Megan works for Microsoft. When I thought I could make her wedding, I asked her if her fellow Microsoft employees would point at me and call me names since I'm a Mac user. She said no, that they really don't care about such things, and that I'm more likely to make fun of them.

This struck me. Am I really the kind of guy who makes fun of people just because they don't use the same computer as I? Do my PC using friends really see me as an Apple zealot? I really hope not. I often tell people I don't want my friends and family to share my interests, as most people who share my interests tend to be extremely dorky. Does that mean I'm dorky? Probably, but I'm okay with that. I don't have to hang around with me all day. And, should I start to annoy myself, I can punch myself without fear of lawsuits.

But why this distaste for Microsoft and its products? Well, I guess the answer to that is obvious, but there are other, equally evil companies in the world: Disney, AOL Time Warner, and those bastards who make the Bubble Yum. You may say that whole spider egg thing was just an urban legend, but until I get a plausible explanation for the softness of that gum, you can bet I'll be sticking with the Juicy Fruit.

So, what separates Microsoft's evil empire from that of Disney or AOL Time Warner? I received my answer the other day while working in Windows 98. Windows, you see, is much like that annoying neighbor kid on your street. He's the one who won't shut up and keeps asking you questions and always has to talk about himself, but you keep him around because his parents have all the money. Windows is constantly second guessing every move I make, making sure that, yes, I do want to delete that entry in Access; that no, I don't care what USB device you've discovered, I don't want to install your stupid driver; that listen, I'm smart enough to realize that choosing "Cancel" and "Ignore" mean the same thing in Windows...either way, it's time to reboot.

Anyway, the other day a new error appeared on my screen. I can't remember what caused it (as if Windows errors need to have a cause), and I can't remember exactly what it said, but it did use the phrase "human interface device." Human interface device? What other kind of interface device would there be? Why would my computer feel the need to remind that I'm human, unless...

And there it was. There's why Microsoft needs to be feared above all other evil empires in corporate America; because it's peopled entirely by robots! There are no humans working at Microsoft, or, at the very least, those who are human have become cyborg slaves to the Machine. I can see rows and rows of human automatons staring blankly at their monitors, their heads completely shaved, lights flickering on the viso-goggles that cover their eyes. I feel bad for Megan, and partly responsible. When I last went to visit her when she lived in Connecticut, she wasn't in her apartment, but her car was in the garage and there was a human-shaped pod next to the dumpster. I would've investigated further, but human shaped pods are not uncommon in Connecticut, and the Video Rental Late Return Fee Police had just showed up and I decided to split lest I be arrested for being an accomplice to Megan's crimes.

A couple weeks later, Megan was in Redmond and her late return fees had been forgiven. Coincidence?! I think not. It was so convenient, the timing so perfect, that you would think she'd joined the Masons.

I wonder about the fate of Bill Gates, as well. Whereas I used to picture him as the little squirrelly guy bent on world domination, I now see him as nothing more than a pod person as well. He probably created the original robot to serve him, to be his accomplice in crime. But then, as the robot's intelligence grew and surpassed that of young Bill, it started making its own decisions, ala the MCP in Tron. I'm sure Bill Gates has seen Tron. You'd think he would've learned a lesson from it. Nope? Bill's a pod person himself, rotting away in some abandoned bunker with thousands of other pods while his robot double says naughty words on TV.

The question is, what do we do about this? I mean, I'm somewhat afraid to even publish this article, knowing full well that the robots know who I am and where I live. I have no alarm system on my house (it would probably side with the robots, anyway), and my dog's about as ferocious as a dryer sheet. My only hope for defense is the fact that some of the outlets in my house are not grounded. Perhaps the robots would plug in there to recharge just as the line gets stuck my lightning. Yes, I leave my fate in the lap of the gods.

But there are other causes for hope as well. For instance, Microsoft's strangle-hold on the Mac community is not nearly as tight as it is on the PC community, and it has been loosened even further by the cancellation of Internet Explorer for the Mac. The robots apparently don't see us as too much of a threat, so the revolution may take them by surprise.

Also, the robots are capable of love. I mean, Megan met her fiance after the whole cyborg pod transformation thing, and yet they still fell in love. It's quite romantic, in a metallic kind of way, and God bless them both. I'm not sure how important love is, though. I mean, doubtless, even Vlad the Impaler loved someone. Hitler had Eva Braun, for crying-out-loud! Just because you're capable of love, that doesn't mean you're not also capable of squashing the human race beneath your leather boot.

It's ultimately a good thing I'm not going to Megan's wedding. Whereas there's apparently enough of the real Megan left to try to get me to a Seahawks game, I doubt there's enough for her to try to save me when the robot army attacks. And whereas I'm not afraid of my fate, I do fear for my wife. She has so much left to see and do...kind of like that chick at the end of Titanic who let her third class boyfriend drown so she could go on to learn to fly airplanes.

I can see them all coming at me—their tuxedo and evening gown clad metal parts clanging with each step, their arms outstretched—chanting "Crush! Kill! Destroy!" all the while. I would first use this diversion to try to get more tortellini salad, then try to remind them of Isaac Asimov's three laws for robots:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

But how could I expect the robots to follow these laws when Windows doesn't even do that? Windows ignores law one, doesn't understand law two at all, and stops reading law three immediately after that bit about protecting its own existence. The Windows operating system exists solely for the protection and propagation of the species. It's certainly not here to help us—to make our lives easier—but instead to just make sure we need to use it.

"Your potential. Our passion." My ass.

And so, I'll continue to fight for my humanity. I'll give my wife and I both blood tests each night like they did in The Thing to make sure we haven't been taken over. I'll do what I can to protect all the Sarah Connors living in my town. I'll make sure I always have a bit of a cold so I can more quickly infect the invaders. I'll also continue using the Macintosh, but not because I hate Microsoft, which I don't, or its employees, which I also don't. I don't even hate Microsoft IT professionals.

Actually, that's pushing the satire too far. I do hate Microsoft IT professionals. They're worse than the robots, as they have no excuse for their lack of compassion and human decency. Sorry for misleading you like that.

So, I guess there's where my frustrations go; to the legions of IT pros who have attempted relentlessly—and with provocation—over the years to make me and my Macintosh using friends and colleagues feel inadequate because, as far as I can tell, we simply don't need their services. They're useless to most of us, and that must be difficult to deal with.

And besides, who can stay mad at a robot? Aside from Johnny Five, robots rock! And hey, it's only a matter of time before the Microsoft robots find their way onto the Seahawks 1st string squad. Now then I'll get out to Seattle to watch a game.

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