That Old Black Magic
Simon Schaffer explores the occult.
On a recent journey to the United States, I learnt a little of the fascinating and darker side of the microchip revolution.
One of the principal difficulties faced by the engineers whose job is to maintain and repair personal computers is the need deliberately to induce failures in these machines, so that their performance can then be checked adequately. One such engineer, Jim Butler of Savannah, Georgia, has an idiosyncratic method of achieving this necessary end: 'after I look the machine over', he is reported as saying, 'I dig down in the bottom of my tool bag and bring out this here rubber chicken. I start dancing round the machine, beating it with the rubber chicken'. Apparently the method always works. With rubber bird in hand, Butler's antics always get his machine to fail and let him see how it functions and why it goes wrong.
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