My computer broke down, can you learn it?

With the recent update to Windows being in the news (not in small part thanks to a computer-eating virus which eats non-updated versions), I've been thinking about how knowledge is situated. Which might seem like a strange connection to make, until you are confronted with this question:

"My computer broke down, can you fix it?"

This is a very common situation to find oneself in, especially if one has acquired a reputation for being able to fix computers. (Even if it only came about from helping someone change the background image that one time.) The knowledge required to navigate this situation is not, however, primarily related to computers. Mostly, it comes down to knowing the asker, their general level of computer literacy and the problems they've asked you to fix in the past. It is a very particular skill set, and over time you develop it through use and abuse.

The aforementioned recent update seems to have crashlanded a fair number of systems, if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by. This made me think about whether I could fix my system if it went down as well, and after poking around for a bit (and making an extra backup of all the things for good measure), I figured that I probably could, given time.

If someone were to ask me to fix the very same problem on their system, I probably couldn't. Not because of my admittedly limited skill in these matters, but because of the different situations in which the problem is situated. If it's just me and my broken computer, then I can take my time, tinker with it, fiddle with the knobs and overall do things that are not directly goal-oriented but which nevertheless gets to the point eventually. It'd be a learning experience, albeit a terrifying one.

If it's not just me, then a whole host of other constraints and situationally specific conditions apply. For one thing, the asker might not have the patience with me learning on the job; they might want the situation dealt with and gone, and me taking my time is the opposite of that. There's also the added element of risk - tinkering is never 100% safe, and accidentally making the problem worse is equally the opposite of the solution. Being risk-averse is good, but it is also slow (yes, even slower), which overall is not conducive to getting things done in a brisk manner.

The point here is not that computers are fragile (though they are), but that knowing something rarely is a yes/no proposition. Mostentimes, we know something sufficiently well that if we were to try it out on our own we'd probably turn out all right, more or less. More often than not, the things we know stem from some first attempt that went in an orthogonal direction from well, but which nevertheless sparked the learning process that led us to where we are. We tinker, we fiddle, and eventually we figure things out.

Though, to be sure, having someone around who you can ask about these things as you go along learning speeds things up immensely.

Do be kind to their patient hearts.