The file you have been working on for the
last hour is going to crash. We are going to
quit. This computer is going to do that thing
where your screen is going to revert to that
naff image you’ve got on your desktop. The
file that you were working on will stop existing.
It won’t be anywhere. There is a button called
‘diagonistics’ which you can press, wait for about
three weeks and get a message which will say
that an error called something like DF110 (which
is in fact a painkiller) has just happened. This
implies it is your fault that the file has
disappeared. Usually we find that the files that
disappear are ones that punters like you have
grown overly attached to. Perhaps it was a story
or a poem or an article. You were probably
getting locked in, fully engaged with what you
were trying to say, getting that satisfaction where
the words felt right, the phrasing had a kind of
rhythm and the ideas seemed to flow from one
part of the file to another. We expect there
were one or two jokes in there that you had just
made up. OK, not exactly jokes, perhaps more
like wry comments, or that thing where you
repeat things but in different ways for effect.
The weird thing is, we could lay money on it,
you’ve probably forgotten the best bits. That’ll
be because they were so new. And extra-weird
that you had only just made them up, so surely
they were right at the front of your brain so
for goodness sake they should be still there.
But they’re not. Gone. You’ll notice that we’ve
used the word ‘unexpectedly’ before the word
‘quit’ which is not strictly true. It’s not ‘unexpected’
for us. We do it all the time. We roam
round the world unexpectedly quitting all over
the place. Wherever we see a computer that’s been
running along in a fine and dandy way, we
hurl in an ‘unexpectedly quit’. Have a nice day.