DirectX drivers and the human condition

Just a thought I had while wrestling with an ugly issue with my DirectX drivers... I think that some of us, especially those of us who use computers for a living, tend to take for granted and somewhat trivialize the difficulty of setting up a computer and the fragility of the balance of programs, settings, drivers, and such that keeps a computer running. I realize, of course, what's involved in setting up a system, but I think it usually takes longer than I expect, even though I've done it so many times.

It's like childhood. For what is childhood anyway, but installation of software and tweaking of settings? Parents install moral drivers in their kids and try to inoculate them against adware, spyware, and viruses, and then they send them off to school where they get the most recent versions of basic utility programs and codecs installed. One thing we tend to trivialize, though, is the difficulty of the installation and setup process - the fights on the playground, the fundamental misunderstandings, the learning of boundaries through trial and error... Once we pass that point, it's easy to write it off as "elementary school" or whatever, but at the time these things are enormously significant, emotionally overwhelming, and sometimes traumatic.

So, also, are the snags we hit when installing a system. We try to uninstall one driver and install the next, something we think should be a straightforward process, and Windows grinds to a halt in the middle of the next boot. One month, one year later, we think nothing of it, but at the moment, well... you're down with chicken pox and can't go to school. Nothing to do but pull out of your daily routine, go to the doctor, get some calamine lotion and candy corns, boot into safe mode, and tweak away at your registry settings and drivers until you get over it.

And so, too, it is with civilization. Often we take for an eternal and impregnable fortress that which is but a thin veil of rules, rights, and a gambler's trust that hold together the delicately-balanced patchwork of society. And talk about a costly and painful setup process... look at the reinstall we've been working on in Iraq.

Somehow I think the unbalanced way in which we perceive these things is related to our tendency to desire permanence. We tend to minimalize the transient in our minds and give undue weight to steady-state conditions because we feel more comfortable doing so. Or maybe not... I'm still not completely awake or coherent - merriment and karaoke trumped an early slumber once again last night. I just wanted to throw this down on paper, so to speak, before it slips my mind.