Machines Sometimes Bite

I taught at OpenUniversity summer schools for some years and this is a memory of those days.  

Machines Sometimes Bite

The microwave laboratory was huge with massive tables dominating the scene and curling snakes of connecting wires were everywhere, with their crocodile mouths protruding from oscilloscopes and electronic measuring devices of all shapes and sizes. My equipment was at the far end and consisted of a computer controlled measuring device. Any waveguide, just newly designed by engineers, could be connected to my machine and after a period of calibration, the effect of subtle changes in design anticipated. My job, my first proper job, as an assistant engineer in the company was to maintain this equipment and to write innovative programmes to tease out new possible uses of this device. After the initial flush of excitement, there had been the realisation that having to allow others to use my machine was a constant headache. It was not that engineers brought weird and wonderful challenges that exhausted me, it was just the mindless stupidity of computer illiterate people who made life difficult. 

I had an uncle who demonstrated the same mindset, when faced with a hi-fi of my brother’s. He wanted to put on a cassette but didn’t know how to operate the machine. He refused to ask anyone and just fiddled with it. Well, fiddle is perhaps too mild a word for it. He twisted knobs, ran his hand across the front pressing buttons with a kind of maniacal anger in staccato movements, which became increasingly aggressive. I have come to the conclusion that there are those who have a deep-set phobia about gadgets or machines of any sort. This section of society can be further sub-divided into two. Those whose phobia gives  rise to a genuine reluctance to use any machines of any kind, even hand held calculators, and the others characterised by false confidence and aggression, who feel that machines can be brow beaten into working, if treated severely enough. Having had to work with both, I came to prefer the former group because they were easier to help. Careful explanation and encouragement does not yield results for the second group usually, as they really want you to shut up and leave them alone with the machine. They feel deeply convinced that a few hours of their violent interrogation with it, will get the job done. A vivid example of the former group, I discovered at an Open University Physics summer school in Durham. 

I was the tutor for laboratory sessions and all the equipment was laid out in readiness for the students. There was a set of equipment for each pair of students and in this case we were doing a lot of electrical measurements. The students all came in chattering and eager except for one middle-aged woman. She stared at her equipment with the same look that a mouse would give a rather large snake. There was a short pause, then, before I had even spoken, she ran out off the room. There was such an obvious distress in her haste that all heads turned. The staff tutor who happened to be near the door, followed her and tried to find out what could be the matter. At a later staff de-briefing, the school counsellor and staff tutor spoke of her absolute fear of laboratories and equipment. She felt filled with self-doubt and the humiliation of the morning episode had meant that no amount of persuasion could convince her to enter the lab again. It was only the first day of the weeklong school and she was so upset she wanted to leave and go home, immediately. She was embarrassed and humiliated at her ‘silliness’ as she called it. There was a long discussion but no real conclusions.

That afternoon I had my first tutorial with the same group of students. We were talking about Heat Capacity and Einstein’s explanation of this subject. Open University students, as a rule, are the best students in the world, challenging, functioning on all wavelengths and ready to question you to death. They want to understand and they often bring out the best in good teachers. That afternoon however, I lost it. I don’t remember the exact question that threw me, but suddenly all the physics I ever knew floated out off the window. It just drifted away from me, accompanied by my entire ability to think rationally. I stood in front of thirty students and found myself asking in desperation ‘What’s my name?’ Embarrassing? Yes. Humiliating? Yes. One of those events that when you remember it, you talk out loud to yourself, to distract your thoughts. I was creeping back to my room when the middle-aged lady who had been the subject of our de-briefing earlier, stopped me. She said, she had been planning to leave the school this evening but on seeing my performance in the tutorial she had changed her mind. If I, a tutor, could be humiliated like that and go on, then she too, would try again. She would go back into the laboratories! She shook my hand warmly and walked off. I stood there feeling that strange bewilderment of being kicked and thanked at the same time. Anyway all of this is just to show that phobias can be conquered in sometimes unusual ways.

My machine, however was suffering from the phobia-ridden engineers, who mostly had my uncle’s approach to the beasts. My idiot’s guide to running the programme and working the machine was being ignored. Each day I found myself sorting out problems others insisted on making. Engineers often understand the hardware side of computers but some can be a little weak on the software. However I had both hard and soft problems. Not only were people mucking about with the programme, but pieces of the machine, meters, leads etc. were disappearing. 

I was hurt and felt victimised. The only woman engineer: that was it. That was why they chose to borrow bits of my equipment rather than the rest. It was unfair! No one took stuff from the guys; I was seen as a ‘soft touch’. Then one day I tracked down two manuals of the computer. They had disappeared a week earlier. When I found the culprit I pounced. I said things I didn’t think I would, he was very upset and I didn’t give a damn. He apologised and handed back the manuals. My change in attitude meant that pieces of my equipment no longer ‘walked’ as before. I was determined to survive and no one would think of me as soft. Something had been lost as well. That middle-aged lady had sacrificed her fear to go back into the lab and learn new skills, I too had sacrificed something of myself in order to survive in a competitive environment. The only problem was, it didn’t somehow feel right. At the end of the year when I resigned and went back into University to do research, it was also to regain human qualities I felt the loss of in industry. One must progress and learn but become wise in the process, not twisted. It was a coward’s approach, but I really felt there was too much to lose.