Evil is the most underrated concept. New types are invented daily, and there's no rock bottom. Worse futures than we can imagine will eventually be praised by the best propaganda. You don't have to believe in the devil. The world is evil because people agree with it.
Computer programs and web interfaces are staggeringly, incomprehensibly, insanely, monstrously, demonically evil.
They take too long to learn, are hard to use, and above all can't be relied on. The intense frustration and sense of malevolence that comes from using Windows for a few decades are like being endlessly stabbed by Bill Gates. Software just blatantly doesn't work so often that one must assume the programmers are evil. To put it in the nicest terms possible, the people working for Microsoft are all hypersatanic shitpeople. They don't want non-experts to have useful tools.
Forget about programs being more reliable or accurate than humans, when they can be less reliable than a drunk in a coma. Humans don't randomly destroy things, dispose of the evidence, and then forget all about it. They may do two out of three. At least vandalism has some nominal reason.
Windows introduced evolving levels of evil in inscrutable interface layers. Since the 1990s, my previously owned copies of Windows have crashed thousands of times. It may start with a crunching sound. If suddenly nothing happens on the screen, nothing might happen ever again. As I write these words on Windows 10, I'm waiting for Firefox to unfreeze in another tab.
PCs destroy data mendaciously. Windows can randomly and surreptitiously delete or destroy files. It can report it saved a file without doing so, or only saved a small part. Files backed up to other media don't show up when the backup is inserted in another computer. 'Irreversible' commands ruin the interface layout. Jiggle the mouse wrong and it highlights and deletes your life's work like it never existed. Windows will secretly scramble hard drives at the command of automatically downloaded malware.
Microsoft has the philosophy of an avalanche, which may be tolerable if you don't mind money rolling out of your pockets. There should be a criminal prosecution of Microsoft's chief "architect", but the legal system seems to make him untouchable, even though Microsoft has basically stolen money from millions of angry users.
It's not all Microsoft's fault. Others' browsers also won't allow users to read downloaded web pages offline. Video sliders don't work right. Highlighting a folder item causes the screen to freeze and jerk violently. Control panels shift with no way to restore them. Websites generate unstoppable floating boxes.
Worst of all is 'free' software. Open source programs (you know binaries don't you) are richly seeded with traps. New users are expected to learn through osmosis, watching experts from a distance.
At its best, software embodies miraculous stupidity. The simplest things are the hardest, full of occult rules: the current dialect, how to input data, how to change settings and activate hidden tools. A tiny mistake will permanently cripple functions.
The greatest insult is the 'Help' button. Missing is a list of all possible functions. Ideally, every program would only have a few functions when first installed.
Brutal startup screens are cluttered with inscrutable hieroglyphics and intimidating interfaces inspired by 1990s hacker movies. Stylish graphics only raise the stress levels.
Those in the know don't want to simplify things.
Make it so IT JUST WORKS. If necessary make the program worse until it does work. Make it so simple it does exactly what it should.
Most software becomes bloatware, a pain universe with hidden laws. Like touch typing, learning how to find features is agony for those without inborn talents. Users have to figure out everything for themselves. Programmers rely on the aftermarket and users to create 'tutorials' written for credentialed experts.
The most backward field is software training. Education has barely progressed since the dark ages. The greatest challenge in the world would be to find an easier way to transfer knowledge. Software only creates additional mysteries.
Society is stagnating while technology is elaborating.
Human brains are random accumulations of improvised solutions that are hard to keep together. Thinking gets harder when there are more choices, which explains the resistance to learning. People are so specialized that everyone is stupid in many ways.
Inefficiency generates disproportionate stress. When something doesn't work, it creates physical pain. People scream in agony, and the stress lasts for hours.
Strangely enough, this also explains why programs are so bad. The programmers give up as soon as they get the software to work at minimal reliability. Patches lock in underlying design flaws.
So many bad habits have accumulated that programmers will have to hit rock bottom. The most infuriated howls of hate never trouble Bill Gates. Like ending war, it would require a break in human nature. All current software should be abandoned in disgust.
The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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