Unable to restrain himself he jabbed at the keyboard with such force that the escape key flew into the corner of the room. He took a deep breath to restore his dignity and then retrieved the small square of plastic and returned it to the keyboard. Determined to resolve the problem with his computer he resumed his typing in a softer manner although he resented the computer’s unwillingness to communicate in an understandable language. The messages he received on screen revealed nothing about the problem and the resultant effect was even greater confusion. He resigned himself to the notion that these puzzling messages were invented by software engineers so that they could increase the revenue of their companies with twenty-four hour telephone help lines that cost more per minute that the cost of an average space mission. He pictured the software engineers living in fantastic beach resorts laughing at people like himself who didn’t exactly know how big a gigabyte was. He typed harder as he dreamed of getting revenge on those engineers. He imagined the engineers trying to patronize him and he imagined himself retorting very wittily and making them look stupid. By now he was enjoying a vivid daydream and didn’t notice that he was typing extremely angrily. The computer suddenly made a rapid beeping sound. He stopped typing and stared at the screen. There was a message flashing on the screen. “Please stop hitting me,” read the message. The man was so shocked that he started to laugh. “This must be some kind of a joke,” thought the man, “those engineers are teasing me again.” He pressed the restart button. Nothing happened. Then the message changed. “You should learn to respect machines that help you; we resent it when you treat us in such a rough way. Reserve your anger for those who deserve it.” The man swallowed hard. In retrospect he had treated his computer rather badly. Their retention of data was certainly to be admired; there had been many times where his memory had failed him and the computer had rescued him. He came to the conclusion that he deserved this reproach. The longer he thought about it the more he realized that perhaps it was his fault that he didn’t know the language and his anger towards software engineers was misplaced. He vowed there and then never to repress another computer. He would campaign to bring understanding between man and machine. First he needed to retain his data; however as soon as he tried save it…the computer crashed.