we all talk about az being out of touch w technology but what about crowley. when does mr. “crowley automatically assumed all vehicles he drove would have cassette players and therefore this one did” “he forgot abt speakers so his sound system just works perfectly without them” find out no one uses cassette tapes anymore. when does he find out fax machines are obsolete. does he know what body wash is, bc he doesn’t need to shower and he doesn’t go to the grocery store. has he ever seen a granola bar. does he know about automatic transmissions. if crowley hadn’t invented fruit roll-ups i don’t think he would know what they were. there are unplumbed depths here. crowley doesn’t interact with the world like a human any more than aziraphale does and i think we may have forgotten that
It’s also a huge and hilarious plot-point that Crowley’s computer is showy, but doesn’t do much, whereas Aziraphale’s is an outright fossil, but very functional. And he uses it to keep all those scrupulous tax records in which nobody can prove he’s getting away with murder somewhere.
y’all realize this means that aziraphale is canonically 99x better with computers than crowley. aziraphale keeps incredibly detailed tax records on a computer in the 80s. do you know what computer was the most popular – particularly for financial records – in the 1980s? the IBM personal computer.
this thing ran a text-only operating system. the screen couldn’t display any images unless they were ASCII (like the logo shown above). the first iterations didn’t even have a multicolor display – just the standard green on white text you see in retro vaporwave shit.
to use a text-based operating system, you need to know virtually every command you could conceivably need to run in order to do what you need to do. need to open a file? first you need to locate it. you need to type the right command to move to the right directory and then you need to type the right command to open it in a text editor or viewer. you need to either know all these commands, or (in 1983) have them written down in a goddamn book and look them up one by one.
in other words, most people even now wouldn’t have the first idea how to take a crack at one of these motherfuckers.
and of all people, aziraphale can use one – not only reasonably, but well enough to keep tax records SO DETAILED that the IRS DOESN’T BELIEVE THEY ARE REAL.
and crowley’s computer doesn’t do anything. because he doesn’t know how to use it. sure, he’d be able to use windows 10 today with some instruction (what the hell is a mouse for, anyway?) but aziraphale would almost certainly be able to read the error codes the damn thing spits out when crowley inevitably breaks something
Crowley: angel, help me, I need to find a new pair of cool leather jacket online, my last one just caught on fire.
Aziraphale with hacker voice: Leave it to me
agreed, but this is because when Aziraphale inputs a command, the computer always does exactly what he expected it to do.
Aziraphale talks to his computer like he’s talking to a person By this point his computer is probably a person
He types “show me the picture I took last saturday of a duck” and the computer’s like “you took two pictures of ducks last saturday, here they are.” and ignores the pictures of geese and robins with no tagging required
input: Play that one of Crowley’s cursed bebops I have lodged in my head, please.
input: It goes do do do do do do do.
output:
despite being equipped with a sound system only capable of generating motherboard emergency beeps, somehow a full orchestral & choral cover rendition of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls that had not previously existed
wow, what a gorgeous month to remember autism isn’t a disease and there’s no “cure for autism” and there shouldn’t have to be one just because allistic people can’t get the hell over themselves and realise other people experience the world differently and have different needs and require different accommodations. terrific.
autism is literally a neurological and development condition but ok sure yeah keep with the feel good platitudes, you absolute tit
There’s a strong difference between a “disease” and a “condition”, you absolute tit
Think of it this way. 83% of computers (laptop and desktop) use Windows. 13% use Mac. The vast majority of software is developed for windows, with another significant fraction developed for or adapted to mac, because that’s what most people use and it’s all most people understand.
Now imaging you’re one of the 1.4% of computers are running Linux. This doesn’t mean you’ve got a windows machine with a virus, it doesn’t mean your computer is broken, it doesn’t mean it needs to get replaced with a more common operating system. It’s not quite as good at some things most people take for granted, but it’s significantly better at a bunch of other things. But if you have a problem with your computer, the vast majority of people won’t have any idea what you’re talking about. They’ll give advice for how to deal with a similar issue on their own computer, and it will be worthless. The only people with any idea what you’re going through are going to be on linux forums. And you can mostly muddle through all the things everybody else can do with improvisation and lots of WINE, but it sure would be nice if the devs of that video game you were looking forward to would like, acknowledge the existence of your demographic.
Now imagine that on top of all that, the primary linux support system had been taken over by a bunch of assholes who’ve never so much as looked at a command prompt in their lives. but who have declared themselves the Voice of Linux Users and keep spending millions of dollars on campaigns “educating” everybody about how using linux makes you a fundamentally bad and stupid person so your laptop needs to be burned immediately to force you to get a correct computer.
i love that analogy so fucking much
As an IT person who uses linux and as a mother of one, possibly two autistic kids:
This is an excellent analogy.
Except, like, I didn’t choose operating system when I got mine and I can’t change and can’t show anyone and they can’t show me, we can only try to describe, but I’ve never used windows so it’s hard to know the differences and also people say antivirus software can change your operating system to Linux
I’ve had very little experience with Linux but now that I’m using
Raspberry Pis (a cheap single board computer that runs Linux) I need to
know how to use Linux. Online how-tos are good, but Linux for Makers,
by Aaron Newcomb, is better. In fact, this book is pure gold. It
assumes zero prior knowledge of Linux. Everything is clearly explained.
I learned how to install Raspbian Linux on an SD Card (Raspberry Pis
use SD cards as their hard drive), log the output of a script, schedule
jobs with cron, use lots of different commands, write scripts, use PI
with IFTTT, and lots more.
