|
(Posted from Montreal)
The following essay, gently poking fun
at technology, was written over twenty years ago. It is still one of
the funniest pieces of work I have ever read, and the profusion of new
technology in the intervening period has hardly dated it at all. I
have tried in vain to contact the author, James Gorman, for permission
to republish it here, so I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it with a
new generation of readers.
 Man, Bytes, Dog,
by James Gorman
Many people have asked me
about the Cairn Terrier. How about memory, they want to know. Is it IBM-compatible?
Why didn't I get the IBM
itself, or a Kaypro, Compaq, or Macintosh? I think the best way to
answer these questions is to look at the Macintosh and the Cairn head
on. I almost did buy the Macintosh. It has terrific graphics, good
word-processing capabilities, and the mouse. But in the end I decided
on the Cairn, and I think I made the right decision.
Let's start out with the basics:
- Macintosh:
- Weight (without printer): 20lbs
Memory (RAM): 128 K
Price (with printer): $3,090
- Cairn Terrier:
- Weight (without printer): l4lbs
Memory (RAM): Some
Price (without printer): $250
Just on the basis of price and weight, the choice is obvious.
Another plus is that the Cairn Terrier comes in one unit. No printer is
necessary, or useful. And - this was a big attraction to me - there is
no user's manual. Here are some of the other qualities I found put the
Cairn way out ahead of the Macintosh:
- PORTABILITY:
To give you a better idea of size, Toto in
"The Wizard of Oz" was a Cairn Terrier. So you can see that if the
young Judy Garland wss able to carry Toto around in that little picnic
basket, you will have no trouble at all moving your Cairn from place to
place. For short trips it will move under its own power. The Macintosh
will not. - RELIABILITY:
In five to ten years, I am sure, the Macintosh will
be superseded by a new model, like the Delicious or the Granny Smith.
The Cairn Terrier, on the other hand, has held its share of the market
with only minor modifications for hundreds of years. In the short term,
Cairns seldom need servicing, apart from shots and the odd worming, and
most function without interruption during electrical storms. - COMPATIBILITY:
Cairn Terriers get along with everyone. And for
communications with any other dog, of any breed, within a radius of
three miles, no additional hardware is necessary. All dogs share a
common operating system. - SOFTWARE:
The Cairn will run three standard programs, SIT, COME
and NO, and whatever else you create. It is true that, being
microcanine, the Cairn is limited here, but it does load the programs
instantaneously. No disk drives. No tapes.
Admittedly, these are peripheral advantages. The real
comparison has
to be on the basis of capabilities. What can the Macintosh and the
Cairn do? Let's start on the Macintosh's turf- income-tax preparation,
recipe storage, graphics, and astrophysics problems:
|
Taxes |
Recipes |
Graphics |
Astrophysics |
| Macintosh |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Cairn |
no |
no |
no |
no |
At first glance it looks bad for the Cairn. But it's important
to
look beneath the surface with this kind of chart. If you yourself are
leaning toward the Macintosh, ask yourself these questions: Do you want
to do your own income taxes? Do you want to type all your recipes into
a computer? In your graph, what would you put on the x axis? The y
axis? Do you have any astrophysics problems you want solved?
Then consider the Cairn's specialities: playing fetch and
tug-of-war, licking your face, and chasing foxes out of rock cairns
(eponymously). Note that no software is necessary. All these functions
are part of the operating system:
|
Fetch |
Tug-of-war |
Face |
Foxes |
| Cairn |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Macintosh |
no |
no |
no |
no |
Another point to keep in mind is that computers, even the
Macintosh,
only do what you tell them to do. Cairns perform their functions all on
their own. Here are some of the additional capabilities that I
discovered once I got the Cairn home and housebroken:
- WORD PROCESSING: Remarkably the Cairn seems to understand
every word I say. He has a nice way of pricking up his ears at words
like "out" or "ball". He also has highly tuned voice-recognition.
- EDUCATION: The Cairn provides children with hands-on
experience at
an early age, contributing to social interaction, crawling ability, and
language skills. At age one, my daughter could say "Sit", "Come" and
"No".
- CLEANING: This function was a pleasant surprise. But of
course
cleaning up around the cave is one of the reasons dogs were developed
in the first place. Users with young (below age two) children will
still find this function useful. The Cairn Terrier cleans the floor,
spoons, bib and baby, and has an unerring ability to distinguish
strained peas from ears, nose and fingers.
- PSYCHOTHERAPY: Here the Cairn really shines. And remember,
therapy
is something that computers have tried. There is a program that makes
the computer ask you questions when you tell it your problems. You say,
"I'm afraid of foxes". The computer says, "You're afraid of foxes?"
The Cairn won't give you that kind of echo. Like Freudian analysts,
Cairns are mercifully silent; unlike Freudians, they are infinitely
sympathetic. I've found that the Cairn will share, in a non-judgemental
fashion, disappointments, joys and frustrations. - And you don't have to know BASIC.
This
last capability is related to the Cairn's strongest point, which was
the final deciding factor in my decision against the Macintosh -
user-friendliness. On this criterion, there is simply no comparison.
The Cairn Terrier is the essence of user-friendliness. It has fur, it
doesn't flicker when you look at it, and it wags its tail. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
Perhaps
once a year I discover a book so remarkable that I end up highlighting
passages on every page. I'm just reading one such book now, 
