I found myself wondering out loud last week how long humankind has been reliant on tools.
My ever-resourceful husband grabbed the computer and started looking it up. Bless him for doing so, because I was too tired to move.
Scientists thought until recently that the use of tools by humans dated back about 2.5 million years, but more up-to-date research shows stone tools were used by hominids something like 3.4 million years ago.
I have only a vague mental picture of what these ancient tools looked like, and how they were used. I would assume, though, that both large and small sticks broke, and new ones had to be found. Even stone tools might crack, requiring fixing or replacing.
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Fast forward to today’s modern tools. Cars break down, machines seize up and our computers sometimes seem to have minds of their own. Entire industries have been created to fix our tools, because they are complex and expensive. Now that’s evolution.
I am no genius when it comes to computers. In fact, I would say I am the opposite. The same goes for machinery. Therefore, when our computer system crashed last week, I asked other people to describe our problem in a way our readers (and I) could relate to.
One colleague suggested that our server going down was like losing the global positioning system (GPS) on a combine at night, at the same time as blowing a wheel and getting stuck in the now-ubiquitous mud.
Sounds about right. You’re down for the count until those issues are fixed.
For several hours, we thought we might be really stuck, but our technology team pulled us out. We had several pages prepared on Wednesday that could have been lost in the computer ether, but the team found them and brought them back into production.
It was quite amazing how calm everyone was, as we made contingency plans to work through the weekend. Everyone pulled together, rearranged plans, reconfigured the work processes, stayed late, and brought us back to normalcy.
Newspapers have always been reliant on tools – great big ones, like presses – so a computer is really just another tool to fix.
It still required the dedication of a great staff to make it happen. And here it is, the periodical miracle that is a newspaper.
