Frequently Unanswered Questions

The Frequently Asked Questions page should be a boon for those who find themselves stymied by advances in technology that they neither asked for nor can rid themselves of.

You find yourself thwarted by some small challenge, some simple misunderstanding regarding a device in your hand, or a product of flat screen technology on the wall, or sometimes, a device that used to be in your hand and is now embedded in a product of flat screen technology on the wall, just a smidge to the left of where you intended to throw it owing to the uncertain light in the living room, so you click on a link that takes you to some godforsaken web page with the title Frequently Asked Questions.

This web page is of special interest to you regarding you and your problem since the font style, script, topic sentence and sample questions all seem to point to the conclusion that these questions were written regarding a self-propelled lawnmower launched on the market in the era when fax machines first made their appearance.

When you read a question and answer that assures you that relatively few livestock have been overtaken and dissected by the mower, and hardly any humans, you start to wonder if you are the intended audience and that we are talking about the same family of products.

Presuming that somehow after a frantic series of clicks you finally arrive at the right destination, you notice that there is little of what you might call frank honesty displayed.

If an incoming question is asked and printed, no matter how ridiculous, they will come up with some kind of answer for it.

This is in contrast to ordinary life, where many responses to your questions are met with an indifferent shrug or a detailed recitation of why exactly the person’s roommate is driving them crazy.

What you don’t get — you don’t get this in real life either — is the responder saying something like, “man, great question! Wish I knew!”

Say someone has a query on a topic of technical complexity and is delighted to find a Q that exactly fits the need:

FAQ: I am receiving a distorted image when the cable is loose or defective. I have disconnected the video cable going from the back of the computer and verified that no pins are bent, burnt or broken. Once verified I re-connected the monitor cable. I see that the refresh rate is not properly set and the monitor has a wavy look or an appearance that lines are going down or across the monitor slowly or fast, perhaps ‘flicker’ is the better word to describe it. Can a distorted image be caused by magnetic or other types of interference?

He is however less satisfied with the answer.

A: I don’t know.

This fellow by the way is the hero of all Frequently Asked Question Answerers everywhere.

No matter the original topic – electronics, finance, economics, trigonometry, astronomy, brain surgery, and relationship questions – fellow Answerers from around the world forward the hard questions to him, at which point he answers quickly and honestly:

A: I don’t know.

It is an enormously freeing act, one of those moments in a life when you cast off the chains of society’s expectations and chart a new path for yourself.

Beyond that, it must often be beyond temptation for these fine people to answer questions by relaying the response that first occurs to them.

Say that a new question rolls in just a few minutes before quitting time.

FAQ: How do I make the text on my screen look bigger?

There likely is a complex solution to this query requiring forty-five minutes of careful typing, but how much easier it is to dash off a quick answer of the following variety, shut down the computer, and go home for the day.

A: There are two ways. Put your face closer to the computer or buy a bigger computer screen.

And so on.

It is a fault of these systems, though a forgivable one, that they often make kind assumptions about the intelligence of their readers, often taking for granted that they know their butts from their elbows, without ascertaining that this is true at all.

There is many a typical question that a lot of us aren’t smart enough even to ask.

How in the world are we supposed to understand the answer when we don’t even comprehend the question?

As it is some of us are left with no recourse but to simply blurt out the questions that are weighing upon us:

Q: What is this device I am holding in my hand? Am I supposed to click it, listen to it, or point it at something?

Or:

Q: What would happen if say, hypothetically, I swallowed your device while attempting to carry a ham sandwich and a sarsaparilla to the couch with my two hands, meaning that I had to put your device between my teeth and then I tripped over the dog? Now every time I burp the channel changes on the TV. This I can live with, but is there any way to make the channels go backwards to the channel I really want?

Or even:

Q: In a flurry of multi-tasking say I accidentally put your device in the toaster. Just say as a hypothetical. Will it still do whatever it is that it’s supposed to do? And while we’re on the subject, what is that again?

Or:

Q: When I copy a macro from one spreadsheet to the other it drains my bank account and sends the contents of my IRA to a Mr. Wizard in The Emerald City. Should I be concerned?

Or:

Q: If I turn this flat screen TV so that it faces the wall will I be able to see the back side of everything in the world?

Other questions are even more existential:

Q: When I press control/alt/delete/backspace/forward slash/back slash/f11, my computer starts to pulse with an unworldly light and words come on the screen saying “you will make a tasty mid-afternoon snack, earthling, right there in that time of the day when a repulsive invading alien from outer space is not yet ready for a full meal but could still use a little protein to pick him up and carry him through to suppertime.” Thank you for your quick reply.

Many of these are difficult indeed and we can surmise that more than a few of them will be forwarded to that one fellow, the heroic one, who had cast off all the chains of expectations and just said whatever the hell he wanted to say, which more and more would be:

A: I don’t know.