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viktweee! Only not really in the broader sense.
Tuesday, 22 August 2006 01:01 pmA worrying cultural truth has been vouchsafed to me, by due process of trekking through five separate shops in Cavendish in search of a CMOS battery worth R10. None of the computer shops in Cavendish keep batteries in stock, although it's a perfectly standard motherboard component: after trying photographic shops (they stock them, although not the exact one I needed) and two separate chemists, I finally unearthed one in a display next to a bunch of little-old-lady hairnets. This leads me to conclude that computer shops don't, in fact, actually expect anyone to ever replace their motherboard battery. Is this because:
1) the bulk of computer users don't ever open up their computer, or
2) computer manufacturers expect you to simply replace the motherboard if the CMOS battery dies, because it's easier, or because
(3) by the time the battery dies, the motherboard is probably obseolete anyway?
I don't like any of these possibilities. They say worrying things about the state of human culture, and the increasing levels of alienation which separate us from any real relationship with the technology we use, not to mention the incredibly negative effects of a throw-away philosophy of development and manufacture.
Then again, I may be influenced by the fact that I'm halfway through Jeremy Leggett's Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis, which is
(a) very accessibly written by an oil-industry guru of considerable authority,
(b) persuasively terrifying, and
(c) doesn't really tell me anything over which I wasn't already losing sleep.
On the not quite as suicidally depressing side, I did manage to replace the battery in my motherboard, and subsequently to reset all the CMOS settings (which default to incredibly unlikely and pointless defaults, presumably as a gesture of defiance and protest at premature battery death, or alternatively as a sort of dadaist artistic statement), all by my own self and without having to actually consult any form of uber-geek. I am consequently typing this on my very own computer and keyboard with considerable smugness. Viktwee!
1) the bulk of computer users don't ever open up their computer, or
2) computer manufacturers expect you to simply replace the motherboard if the CMOS battery dies, because it's easier, or because
(3) by the time the battery dies, the motherboard is probably obseolete anyway?
I don't like any of these possibilities. They say worrying things about the state of human culture, and the increasing levels of alienation which separate us from any real relationship with the technology we use, not to mention the incredibly negative effects of a throw-away philosophy of development and manufacture.
Then again, I may be influenced by the fact that I'm halfway through Jeremy Leggett's Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis, which is
(a) very accessibly written by an oil-industry guru of considerable authority,
(b) persuasively terrifying, and
(c) doesn't really tell me anything over which I wasn't already losing sleep.
On the not quite as suicidally depressing side, I did manage to replace the battery in my motherboard, and subsequently to reset all the CMOS settings (which default to incredibly unlikely and pointless defaults, presumably as a gesture of defiance and protest at premature battery death, or alternatively as a sort of dadaist artistic statement), all by my own self and without having to actually consult any form of uber-geek. I am consequently typing this on my very own computer and keyboard with considerable smugness. Viktwee!
