Who is the Dummy?

    Arguing with Computers-who is the dummy?

   I was attempting to enter a health-care portal the other day. It was an opportunity for me to review test results from several medical providers taken at the behest of a local Physician.

   Like most portals, you enter your name and ask for entrance to the site. Uusally, your friendly artificial intelligence unit (computer) asks you to create a password, which will protect your information from intrusive viewers. That seems logical enough, right?

  After eleven attempts to establish this relationship, with my inanimate information guardian, my blood pressure was rising. I was unable to gain entrance to the portal. Not wanting to admit defeat, I phoned the physician’s office and asked for help. They routed me to a technical “help desk.” That person said “no problem, I will send an e-mail with a password that will allow you entrance to the information.” That sounded helpful. I tried the new password. The computer either said that it was old information or wrong information. And, it wasn’t asking for any further explanations.

   Mild frustration mounting, I recalled the Dr.’s Office. I was routed back to the help people, who sent me yet another e-mail. That didn’t work either. I repeated this fool’s errand twice more, before giving up. By now, I was ready to start screaming at the moon. The remembered definition of insanity is “trying the same thing over and over again, and not having it work, yet expecting different results on the next trial.”

  By now I had had enough. It was time to resort to the nuclear option protest. I formulated a strongly-worded letter, to the physician’s office, advising him that I was stymied in my efforts to review test results and asking for some assistance. I didn’t mention, but should have, that we have several other such portals established, with other medical providers, and haven’t ever experience problems like this. I haven’t yet heard back. I would expect that they think I am yet another feeble-minded, septuagenarian who can’t manage the newer information technology procedures.

       I should have learned by now that you don’t argue with inanimate computers. They don’t get irritated. They don’t ever get tired of saying “no, you can’t have entrance to the site.” They are relentless in their assertions, no matter how many times you pound on the keyboard and threaten to send them to the recycling center. Sometimes, you wonder if there isn’t some artificial intelligence presence, in these heaps of plastic and circuitry, that is smirking at you and sarcastically suggesting “Go ahead stupid, try it again.”

     In that computers, passwords and artificial intelligence are here to stay. I guess it is we mere mortals who will have to adjust as best we can, like it or not. But, there is always the gleeful image, in the back of my mind, of hauling this pile of circuitry off to the dump and let it commune with the garbage via all of its password protected information.

                                    -30-

                                   (500 words)

                              Joseph Xavier Martin