Our own Nerd High Priestess, Karen Green, returned from a gathering of computer code mavens and reported that one of them, a Microsoft stalwart, was a closet car and bike freak. He said his collection of old British motorcycles and a Jaguar E-type sports car are a welcome low-tech relief from his high-tech professional life.
Thus speaks innocence, and ignorance. It is the voice of the man who loves motor vehicles, but doesn't know much about them. Maybe it's because I know so much about things mechanical, and so little about programming, but I believe it may be said of computers, "There's less here than meets the eye."
Computers are intricate, but repetitive, at bottom a kind of barn dance for ons and offs, ones and naughts. They embody some interesting miniaturization, as in the sub-micron width traces etched into the best microprocessors. Still, I don't think it can be said that anything in computers exceeds the complexities of reciprocating-engine combustion dynamics and chemistry. Or carburetor fluidics.
The operative difference between computers and motor vehicles is that the latter are too familiar, their marvels too easily dismissed as commonplace.
Computers are new, and not yet entirely predictable. I suspect their crankiness is at least half their charm for those who are drawn to them. The microcomputer, especially, is on its way to achieving the appliance status enjoyed (?) by the automobile. But the computer isn't there just yet. It is, instead, at about the level of development of cars and motorcycles in the days following the introduction of electric starters, which is what makes it fun.
Someday, someone in high-tech is going to reveal that they have a collection of old PCs, and maybe a Macintosh, to play with as low-tech relief from life at work. Does that sound crazy? Well, is anyone prepared to tell me that today's PCs are any less quirky, any less unfathomable, as a 1965 BSA 650 Lightning?
I thought not.