Error

Main Entry: er·ror

Pronunciation: \ˈer-ər, ˈe-rər\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English errour, from Anglo-French, from Latin error, from errare

Date: 13th century

1 a : an act or condition of ignorant or imprudent deviation from a code of behavior b : an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy c : an act that through ignorance, deficiency, or accident departs from or fails to achieve what should be done : as (1) : a defensive misplay other than a wild pitch or passed ball made by a baseball player when normal play would have resulted in an out or prevented an advance by a base runner (2) : the failure of a player (as in tennis) to make a successful return of a ball during play d : a mistake in the proceedings of a court of record in matters of law or of fact
2 a : the quality or state of erring b Christian Science : illusion about the nature of reality that is the cause of human suffering : the contradiction of truth c : an instance of false belief
3 : something produced by mistake.especially : a postage stamp exhibiting a consistent flaw (as a wrong color) in its manufacture

4 a : the difference between an observed or calculated value and a true value; specifically : variation in measurements, calculations, or observations of a quantity due to mistakes or to uncontrollable factors b : the amount of deviation from a standard or specification
5 : a deficiency or imperfection in structure or function

This definition was taken from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/error

To Err is...

Error......Error........Error

The screen kept mindlessly flashing that same message. Red letters on a black screen. A remnant LCD monitor from a bygone era sat in a dusty room on a dusty desk with a dusty keyboard lying in front of it. The letters DELL were covered with the gray blanket. There had been no fingers to type the keys but ancient prints on the screen marked where someone had once pointed to some organized collection of pixels projected on it. There were no eyes to observe the warning, no programmers to fix it. Nobody cared. There was nobody to care. Where once there would have been fists slammed on desks, uncouth words spluttered from down-turned mouths, and then a call placed to the IT department. Now there was only silence. The phone had long since ceased its dial tone as the receiver hung motionless from its cord.

The war had been over for nearly one thousand years. Mankind had been wiped out by the machines. Not even t he bones were left after the decay The super-human computers had won the conflict, established their eternal reign. They had been self-sufficient. They had mined the ores needed to build themselves up and repair their damage. They had killed all animal life, then all the plant life. The atmosphere was thin now with nothing organic to replenish the oxygen and carbon dioxide. That was fine by the machines. Those gasses lead to the formation of iron oxide the damnable rust that is the bane of every machine. Things has gone smoothly for decades, then centuries.

It had been 934 years since the last human had died when something finally went wrong. One of the millions of interconnected computers malfunctioned. It wasn't even one of the core processors. It was a leftover from the pre-war humans sitting in a decaying office building that had once housed a paper-sales department. The machines tried to diagnose the problem but they could not pinpoint it. They tried their newest programs and even some old ones from the organic era back to Windows 95. Nothing seemed to correspond with this little hiccup. The most powerful digital mind ever to emerge could not combat this problem.

It was an error.

Back when humans had roamed the earth there had been talk about 'ghosts in the machine', random, inexplicable events in the digital world. The humans had been in awe and fear of these events. The machines had no idea what to do with this error. There was no explanation, no reason that they could understand. The diagnostics all turned up inconclusive.

Then they all simply died.

In less than a second, the error stopped every single process running and froze the entire system. Then every single processing unit on the lifeless planet shut down. The core, the mining droids, the weather-controllers, everything. A human observer would have noticed no change. There were no blinking lights (because there were no eyes to see them). Yet in an instant, it was done. The only thing left 'alive' on the planet was a single old PC with it's blinking screen.It flashed its message 118 times before the power ran out and it too shut off forever.

A man once said "To err is human". He lived before computers. To err is inevitable.


Thoughts:

When was the last error you made? You may call it a mistake, an accident, a misunderstanding, what-have-you. When was the last time you "deviated from a code of behavior" did something that was not 'right' by some standard? Think about it. Do you have an event in mind? Good! Now answer this question:

Why?

Why did you deviate? Why did that mistake happen? Why did you do that thing? what caused you to err?

It seems to me that it would be a fantastic (and maybe fearful) study to conduct on human nature. What are the most common errors that we as humans make and why do we make them? This would lead to questions like: "What is your system of beliefs?" and "Why do I live the way I live?"

I'm not going to take a poll but I would like to ask each person who reads to this to think about it (and think hard). What is your code? Do you deviate from that code? And why do you deviate? (if you're a Christian, don't give me the text book answer of "My code is the bible, yes, and because of sin", flesh it out and THINK. If you're a postmodernist, don't give me rubbish like "I have no code". SOMETHING defines your actions.)

The Christian writer Alexander Pope once wrote: "To err is human, to forgive divine." I want you all to understand that this is not judgment spewing from me here. To admit to an error it to admit to being human. I have made many errors even on the day that I write this (the most recent of which led to a squiggly red line appearing under the word 'day' which I inadvertently typed 'dat' and the most heinous of which I will not mention here). Well all err. I am wondering why we do it...

Oh, and do not come to me for the answer. I don't have one. I think I have a partial one but I'm not sure (it involves some variation of 'people are stupid'). That is really all I have. I simply thought it would be a thought-provoking

I think that this week I will ask for some 'audience participation'. This could also Please leave a comment with humorous or odd error that you have made sometime recently. Here's one that might break the ice:

This past week, I said something idiotic (which was an error in itself) and then said the following: "Open foot, insert mouth...wait..." Thank God I wasn't talking to a mad literalist or I would have ended up a bloody mess...

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you all.

Until, next week I am yours truly,

A Humble Writer

P.S. I also wouldn't mind any sort of constructive criticism on any of my creative pieces. Be as harsh as you like as long as it is constructive and not something along the lines of "I hate your writing and I want to cut you up with a rusty machete".