Error 2.0

I've been writing lately about Millennials as well as Library 2.0, and it occurred to me that there's one area in Computerland that really needs some 2.0 attention. You know it, I know it, we all know it. It's those Dreaded Messages from Computers. You know what I mean. "You are low on disk space." "Memory error." "Error in line 27." "Mistake in line 9." "Illegal operation."

"Illegal operation" is a good one. So, I think. I've committed an illegal operation. What law have I broken? Are you sending the Computer Police to get me? Do I have the right to remain computing? Or was this a surgical operation I've unwittingly committed? Are we talkin' the American Medical Association here?

How about some helpful error messages? I wanted to call this post "Help 2.0," although I have to admit that online and network help has gotten better in the last few years. I can often find what I need to know in the help, local or on the internet (although it's sometimes under a heading that would never occur to me.) I still make notes in my computer books when I find the answer, because sometimes it takes awhile to find it (or, in the case of our reference desk computer, it gets re-imaged every so often, and I have to change all of the Microsoft-preferred or My-Place-of-Work-preferred defaults and settings back to the Marianne-preferred settings. There's nothing like having your own name underlined because Microsoft thinks it's misspelled.)

What would a helpful error message be like? It would not only tell you what you did, but either what you should do to fix it, or how you can do better next time. What do you think of these reflections on what I think recent error messages have been trying to tell me?

• Oh, you silly! Don't you know you can't have that many tabs open? It's really more than this poor program (or machine, or whatever) can handle. I know that YOU, with your superior human brain, can deal with this, but your poor, benighted computer really can't cope. So next time, no more than six or seven tabs at a time, ok? Especially if you're going to be playing music, downloading pdfs, and all of that other fancy stuff.
• Oh, bother. I've run out of memory again. No, really, it's me, it's not your fault. How were you to know my true limitations? Even I can't admit them all. So please, could you shut me down for a bit, and try again a little slower? I'd really appreciate the rest.
• Oops! Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but there's a new version of this program available, at it can handle more things than I can. I know, there's no way that you'd know this. If I could, I would have told you. Really. I wish they'd set me up to do that. But I only hear about it after the fact. So if you go to the Help and look under "New Stuff That No One's Told You," they'll have the answers there.
• Owie! Oh, I really blew that one, didn't I? I've been doing fine all this time, and you had no reason to suspect I would fail you this time. So sorry. I'll try not to let it happen again. So if you sneak around the back and save what you were doing, you should be fine.

My favorite help message of all time (in response to an acutual error) was on our old mainframe network, back at the Dawn of Time. "You have invoked Help," it began. Well, duh, I thought (although it may have been back before "duh" came into the common language.) If you think I need to be told that I'm asking for help, our relationship isn't starting off on a good footing, is it? Like the washing machine repairman who asked my mother, awash in suds, if she was sure that the machine was plugged in.

On this Halloween, let's see if we can invoke some helpful Help and error messages.