Smug techies don't help my mood.
Costs too much to fix.
This is the second time in my life that a hard drive has crashed. First time with a PC and this time in my MacBook. I suppose it's what I get for traveling with a big magnetic appliance as if it were made of rubber.
I'm pretty upset about all the data I lost, but I think about how this reflects on my relationship to technology. I might be a cyborg, in the mundane but philosophical sense of my dependence on computer technology, but through crashed hard drive I have come to the realization that all talk of artificial intelligence is necessarily "kid's stuff" compared to organic intelligence when you see how RELIEVED I am to lose all this "data." As a cyborg, the organic equivalent to this lost data is breaking a smallish bone - temporary handicap, potentially costly recovery, six months to get back to Doh (Solfege, not Simpson).
But if I'd lost organic intelligence in a "hard drive crash" of the physiognomy, man, someone would be helluv pissed (probably not me per se, because I'd literally be out of my mind).
Don't get me wrong. I went through a moment of rage upon first discovering my faulted hard drive, but a part of me is excited to have lost four months of data (four months because the last time I backed up my HD was in July).
To add ironic insult to injury, do y'all remember I'd blogged a few weeks ago about my bike being "stolen.?" A short week later I found out it had not in fact been stolen, rather I had locked it up at a bar and then got a ride home later forgetting I'd biked there in the first place.
So far so funny, right? Dumb Anne, got drunk, "misplaced" her bike and got mad at the world for no reason. Lesson learned...Not so fast.
A few days ago did I lock my bike on a busy corner of Brooklyn and leave it there from noon to 4pm (i.e. in broad daylight). And so just as I had locked it, had the lock been undid and had Anne come back to a bikeless expensive ass Kryptonite lock. Yes people, my bike REALLY got stolen.
In the end, I didn't get to be enraged that my bike actually got stolen, because I'd already gotten so enraged the first time around when the thief was my drunken forgetfulness. My ego cried wolf and the whole village of my emotions turned the other way.
(Funny also that two things I had believed to be invincible - the Kryptonite lock and the Apple computer - are as penetrable as anything else I own.)
Folks, turn off your computers for a second. Now walk away from it. And stay away from it for like a whole day. Make it a day that counts. Monday before a deadline or something. It will feel really screwy at first, but then really good real quick. (Disclaimer: when you get fired don't look at me.)
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