Electronics Theory. or: Why Things Break Down.

I'm sitting at a friends place, who has been terribly unlucky with computers and electronic equipment throughout his life. My theory though, is: it's his fault.

I've seen a short news editorial about this 11-year old (or however old) little boy, who could sit in front of any computer and within five minutes (he would just type stuff in a word document or whatever) the computer would shut down. This is the basic tenet in my theory.

Ulf Danielsson, professor in theoretical physics, sums up where natural science is today:

The history of natural science is full of discoveries where we get more and more aware of how we ourselves is a part of the picture. Time and space are depending on the movement of the observer for instance. So the scientific process is about discovering and specifying in what ways the reality out there - if there is indeed really something there - is dependent or independent on us. There is nothing self-evident about this, but it's all a part of the scientific process and discovery.*

To put it clearly; we do not (yet) know to what extent the mere fact that we as objects (or scientists in some cases) "tamper" with reality by way of our mere existence. And this is where it gets interesting with electronics and machines. Seeing as this is a current quest in science -still surrounded by much uncertainty and yet unanswered - we don't know what effect humans has on the machines they built, but (since we don't know what the effect is, and this is still under investigation) they are built as if humans have no impact on the machines.

Machines do work well for us, but sometimes they mysteriously break down. Although the process was seemingly uninterrupted; nothing was disconnected, no circuitry is physically broken, and so forth. This leads me to conclude, referring to an old sci-fi term: WE are the ghost in the machine.

* Danielsson in "filosofiska rummet: Universum och verkligheten" (my translation swedish-english)" P1, aired 20100228 i P1.