"I have this answering machine," she tells Ambrose, holding up a glossy book. "This is a very good manual. All the steps are very clear."
"I'm sure you noticed the typo," Ambrose replies. "It's on page 42." He then recites a string of German words, repeating them with slight variation. As obsessive as his brother, Ambrose is clearly bothered by the equivalent of writing, "Put the phone to charge on the cradle," as opposed to writing, "Put the phone on the cradle to charge."
"Ambrose," Monk informs Sharona, "can speak seven languages."
The joke is implicit and therefore difficult to explicate. The existence of a good manual arouses Sharona's interest. A man who cares about a mistake in a manual denotes an eccentric; that he worries about the foreign language section (which he also wrote) denotes an eccentric genius. The invisibility of this author (Ambrose is literally unable to show himself to the world) plays into the sui generis aspect of manuals, yet their "out of nothing" existence underwrites Ambrose's godlike authority. He is later able to pinpoint the killer's weapon because, naturally, he wrote the manual for it!
The episode's joke is tied to a wider cultural experience: humor aimed at or engendered by user manuals. Humor is often a form of subversion, a topsy-turvy vision of the world created to underscore a person's ambivalence about social or cultural institutions/authorities. Subversion is a common way of dealing with the reading experience— a way of wresting control from the implied author. Through humor, the reader resists the author's authority. Often this humor is personal, unacknowledged by the community at large (a high school student resisting an assigned classic, for example), but with user manuals, the resistance breaks out because the authority of the author is so explicit and, consequently, less ignorable. The manual exists to instruct a supposedly ignorant reader. Often the reader is ignorant (hence the need for instruction) but resents, consciously or unconsciously, the position of subservience into which the text has placed him.
Dislike of manuals has become so notorious that manufacturers have countered by claiming that the consumer, rather than the manual, is at fault. Manuals cannot be responsible for so much angst, they assert, since no one reads them. There is the truth to such assertions. In his article, "Attack of the Gizmos," Richard Cabot states, "I know several individuals who have never opened an owner's manual in their lives," and points to the increasing production of "quick-start guides and similar micromanuals" as alternate solutions (80). The increase of cautions in manuals over the past thirty years suggests that manuals may serve more as protection for the company than service to the consumer.
Why don't people read manuals? Is it a gendered reaction? Comedians tell us that men never ask for directions. Is the same mentality at work with technology, which historically has been gendered male? The argument sounds better than it reasons. It is more likely that people don't read manuals because (1) they dislike change, personified by technology; (2) they don't like the style of the manuals. In his book, Blaming Technology, Samuel Florman argues that fear of technology is caused by a displacement of anxieties over change and complexity. He cites the most common myths about technology—the "living" machine (think Hal from 2001) and the technocratic elite (think genetic engineers)—and argues against "abject pessimism" as well as "foolish optimism" in regards to technology and technological advances (186). Edward Tenner's book Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences indicates why "abject pessimism" may be so rampant. We fear what we think we cannot control. The cover of Tenner's book shows an appliance cord in snake-like coils; the head of the cord, the end with the plug rears upright, pointing aggressively to the left of the reader. The cord is a cobra prepared to strike. Symbolically, technology has moved beyond our control. It will attack us when we least expect it.
Technology has always been with us, from the first wheel to longbows and irrigation ditches. Possibly, dislike of technology has also always existed (just ask the French at Agincourt). However, Tenner could find no evidence of the concept of the "malevolent machine" (that epitome of scary technology) prior to 1800. The nineteenth century, of course, saw the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. At this time, systems replaced instruments (Tenner, 16); for example, harvesting a field, anciently at least, would have been carried out by several pieces of technology (scythe, plow) working in harness. Together, those instruments created a complex system. A clock, on the other hand, is a single piece of technology which contains, internally, a complex system. As the production of systems increased and technology was marketed to non-experts, the systems were hidden for the sake of the consumer. Hidden systems explain why my three-year old nephew can turn on a television and the DVD/VCR/sound system combination without a pause or a huh-what? Ideally, hidden systems should require less training; you should be able to just hit a button. Less ideally, hidden systems can break down and their existence appears to increase rather than decrease uneasiness. "It [is] impossible," writes Tenner, "for anyone to understand how the system might act" (16). Like the curled appliance cord, the system might lash out at any moment.
Humor is a natural reaction to this type of uncertainty; such humor includes satire and hyperbole. Twain satirized both the telephone and the "first writing-machine" (dictaphone), devices located in his own home. Of the latter, he wrote that he tried a dictation machine and finally pawned it off on "Howells" (probably William Dean Howells): "I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not believe myself. He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered" (170).
Hyperbole appears in the expanded use of Murphy's law. In 1949, Captain Edward Aloysius Murphy investigated the failure of G-measuring devices in rocket sled tests. Murphy discovered that the trouble was due to faulty installation of the devices. He stated, "If there's more than one way to do a job and one of those ways will end in disaster, then somebody will do it that way" (Waggoner, 82). Murphy's law was instantly co-opted by the public, which gave it a slightly different and much more negative twist: "If something can go wrong, it will." When Dianna Waggoner tracked down Captain Murphy in 1983, he explained that his original law was never meant as pessimistic prophecy but simply as a reminder to engineers and testers. In a fitting piece of irony, Waggoner discovered that Murphy had never made any money off the "books, calendars and posters" spawned by his misquoted law (82).
In these books, calendars and posters, Murphy's law has been taken far beyond its original context. Arthur Bloch's book Murphy's Law: wrong reasons why things go more! includes such trinkets as "As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold" (57) and "When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two weeks to clear. When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight" (64). A law about complex machines has been picked up and transformed into a law regarding the complex uncertainties of human nature and modern life...which includes machines. Bloch does tackle technology. He proclaims, "If a programmer's modifications of an existing program works, it's probably not what the users want," and comments wryly, "If you take something apart and put it back together enough times, eventually you will have two of them." (42-43). At the root of Bloch's proclamations lies the exaggerated fear of complexity and, more importantly, its application in one's life.
Application of technology in one's life explains the existence of manuals. As complex technologies became more available to the consumer, manufacturers worked to allay misgivings about private usage. As early as 1858, an advertisement for a sewing machine boasted, "A child can manage it," with the (unintentionally) ironic rider, "Parties purchasing will receive full instructions." A 1869 advertisement promoted The Elementary Principles of Sewing Machine Mechanism and Sewing Machine Stitches, with a glance at the history of the Sewing Machine by Mr. J. Battey; an ad from the same year quoted a satisfied customer who "learned the use of [the] Wheeler & Wilson machine without personal instruction" (5, my emphasis). Ease of use became synonymous with ease of learning.
As well as sewing machines, phonographs and watches also included manuals. Currently, manuals come with televisions, VCRs, DVDs, phones, radios, stereos, vacuum cleaners, television sets, weed whackers. Like Murphy's Law, it is their ubiquity that makes manuals both powerful and susceptible to subversion. Unfortunately, such ubiquity obscures the underbelly of user manual readership—those readers who read and laugh and roll their eyes. It is possible to generalize, however, what readers laugh at by examining trends of manual humor. Most manual humor subverts three aspects of manuals: (1) obvious instructions or "hints"; (2) unhelpful or confusing directions; (3) the manual's inevitable obsolesce.
Before examining these three aspects, I will compare a 1960s appliance manual to one from 1994. By studying the changes and consistencies between them, we can develop an appreciation of what readers have encountered in manuals over the last thirty years and possibly beforehand. The 1960s manual is for an electric slicing knife. The 1994 manual is for an electric skillet. Both manuals are stapled, paper booklets; both open with a description of the appliance's parts. The 1994 manual is heftier than the 1960s manual; it includes instructions in Spanish as well as recipes. It also has substantially more warnings. "Important Safeguards" comprises the entire first page of the 1994 manual; additionally, there are boxed and highlighted "Cautions" on pages 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
The 1960s manual also contains cautions, but they are woven into the text rather than individually highlighted: "Be sure that the electric slicing knife is not plugged into outlet before removing or replacing blades" carries a different tone from "CAUTION: To reduce the risk of electric shock, always remove automatic heat control before immersing this product in water," although the message is the same. The 1960s manual does have nearly triple the number of pictures, mostly in the "How to Slice" section in which disembodied hands carve up pineapples, party sandwiches, vegetables, ham, and lamb. In both manuals, sketched pictures are used rather than photographs.
The 1994 manual is black and white whereas the 1960s manual uses some background color. Nevertheless, the 1960s manual appears more muted since the 1994 manual uses larger type (12 point compared to 11 point), more bold words, more caps, more boxes emphasizing parts of instruction. Both manuals advertise other products: the 1960s manual advertises a Deluxe Toast-R-Oven and an All Stainless Steel Peek-A-Brew Coffee Maker on the back page. The 1994 manual advertises various products, such as a Scotch-Brite Cookware Scrub 'n Sponge, within the text itself. Both manuals provide a one-year warranty: the 1960s warranty on half a page; the 1994 warranty on a full page. Both manuals give instructions for obtaining replacement parts; the 1960s manual provides a half page of service centers by state with addresses; the 1994 manual provides one address with a non-toll-free contact phone number. Both manuals recommend the user go to the phone book for more information.
In general, the differences are largely organizational (although both manuals do use numbered steps). The 1960s manual begins with "How to Install Slicing Knife Storage Rack" and "How to Use Your Electric Slicing Knife" before bringing up "Care" of the knife while the 1994 manual begins with warnings, cautions and explanations. These are repeated in the Spanish section. Of the two, the 1960s manual appears easier to use, but it is hard to know whether the 1960s manual covers all the bases since its instructions are so minimalistic. Compare, for example, directions on washing between the two manuals: the 1960s manual advises, "Wash carving fork in sudsy water, rinse and dry" while the 1994 manual advises, "After washing, always rinse the skillet, cover and rack thoroughly with clear hot water. Any detergent left on the skillet or cover after cleaning can cause staining when the appliance is reheated." Are skillets more complicated to wash or is the 1994 company simply more concerned than the 1960s company at covering any user queries? (Or protecting itself?)
I chose two written texts, but nowadays, many appliances, such as bread makers, come with video manuals. The process of instruction is similar: a description of parts, a guide to various functions, an examination of troubleshooting possibilities (even the insouciant 1960s manual provides "Hints"). All in all, the matter, if not the presentation, seems to have remained the same over the last thirty years. I postulate that manual content, in general, has probably not greatly changed since The Elementary Principles of Sewing Machine Mechanism and Sewing Machine Stitches, although presentation may have altered considerably.
The most noticeable consistency between the 1960s and 1994 manuals is the cleaning instructions. The instructions are probably necessary, but a reader battling fears of technology as well as inferiority in the face of an authoritative, omnipresent writer will likely see the instructions as redundant and condescending. The reader will react with mockery and exaggeration. We can get an early glimpse of this reaction in the work of Rube Goldberg. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who created whimsical satires of machinery. Mechanization, Goldberg claimed, was to take a simple action and "do it the hard way" (Goldberg, The Best of Rube Goldberg, 6). His cartoons are left to right narratives of intricate and unrelated actions, ending in a self-proclaimed result. Goldberg created most of his machine-oriented humor between World War I and World War II from the "Automatic Weight-Reducing Machine" in 1914 to the "Self-Rolling Rug" in 1929 to the "Self-Operating Napkin" in 1931. He is a transitional figure between Twain, who satirized machinery, and contemporary comedians who satirize the manuals which accompany that machinery.
In 1959, Goldberg produced How to Remove the Cotton from a Bottle of Aspirin. His text and pictures bring to mind manual sections such as "How to Use Your Electric Slicing Knife" and "Special Cleaning Instructions." In the chapter "Simple Way to Get That Stubborn Wad of Cotton Out of a Bottle of Aspirin," Goldberg postulates that first, moths devour a jacket, causing an opposing weight to descend which sets off a dynamite explosion. The explosion ousts a hermit from a new housing complex; the hermit falls into a quiz program where he wins money. He uses his money to attend a private Rockette performance. One of the Rockettes kicks a football which flies into space, through a modern art museum and into a hippopotamus' mouth. The hippo punctures the football. The escaping air powers a wheel which crushes grapes. Wine from the crushed grapes drips into a bottle, which activates a lever, which moves a large hand; the hand thumbs over a passing helicopter. The helicopter has a boll weevil on board, the boll weevil seizes the cotton--for which fiber it has a natural inclination--lifting it out of the bottle. Voila!
In a contemporary satire of similar ilk, Steve Martin complicates the use a simple tool (a sledgehammer). He first defines terms (a section found in any instruction manual):
Thunk: This is the sound that the "clanker" (street term for the heavy-weighted slug) makes when wielded against the "stuff" (see next)."Many people," Martin informs us, "are surprised to find out that the sledgehammer has only one moving part." He then postulates the possible development of a new sledgehammer "currently being beta-tested," which will be called "below normal." Any problem with the sledgehammer, he explains, "afflicts only—to use the researcher's lingo—'really dumb people,'" and he refers to a user whose sledgehammer went out of control and "destroyed his living-room wall, even though he never let go of its handle" (80).
Stuff: Things that are to be wanged (see next).
Wang: The impact of the clanker and stuff.
Smithereens: The result of being wanged. (80)
Feeling stupid or just being stupid comprises a substantial part of the relationship between readers and manuals. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Douglas Adams mentions the (improbable) instructions for use on a package of toothpicks as one of the lowest points of human intelligence. When I bought a cardboard sunguard for my windshield, I generated easy laughs by telling people about the guard's stupid instruction: Do not drive with this in place. In his article "Operating Instructions," Paul Tullis echoes such obviousness when he writes, "Instruction #2: Plug the [microwave] into an electrical outlet. It has a three-foot cord with a grounded prong for such a purpose" (16).
In "Operating Instructions," Tullis mimics the numbered steps used by many manuals, including the 1960s and 1994 manuals. Imitation is a common approach in manual mockery; numbered steps in particular are used to indicated the manual's lack of clarity. Tullis' mock instructions climax with "Instruction #3: Discover that not only are there no instructions [in the booklet] for recourse . . . neither is there an address, phone number, or Web site listed as means of contacting the manufacturer about your problem." The numbered instructions, Tullis suggests, are mostly aimed at convincing the user how great the machine is, rather than actually giving any useful tips. It is not the user's fault if they can't understand (and carry out) the process.
Steve Martin builds on Tullis' approach in his article "Side Effects," a satire of the instructions received with medication. (This article was read at the 2005 Mark Twain awards honoring Steve Martin.) The large list of side-effects--which includes "This drug may shorten your intestines by twenty-one feet" and "Discontinue use immediately if you feel that your teeth are receiving radio broadcasts"—precludes the effectiveness of the drug. Martin finishes the article by advising:
You should also be out of reach of any weapon-like utensil with which you could threaten friends or family, who should also be briefed to not give you the pills, no matter how much you sweet-talk them. (84)The conclusion of the instructions is that the product shouldn't be used at all, making the instructions themselves rather pointless.
The uselessness of a manual's instructions is only increased by the manual's eventual obsolesce. In the British comedy As Time Goes By (regularly shown on PBS), Jean asks her husband to look through her manuals when the vacuum cleaner fails to start. To Judith's daughter, Lionel states, "I'm looking at your mother's collection of instruction manuals for domestic appliances. Half of them should be in a museum." Later, he informs Jean, "Some of these old ones are quite fascinating. This one was written by James Watt." He continues:
"There's another one—we don't have a toasted sandwich maker."In the end, it turns out that the manual is unnecessary; Jean simply forgot to turn the vacuum on "at the plug."
"We used to," Jean replies. "It got all [gunky] and we had to throw it away."
"It wouldn't have gotten [gunky]," Lionel tells her smugly, "if you'd consulted your instruction manual."
The obsolesce of manuals—which should be in museums, which become purposeless after new appliances are bought, which don't help anyway—occurs rapidly with products that regularly add improvements, such as computers. Computer manuals, unlike appliance manuals, have changed substantially in the last thirty years. The large, index-heavy manuals of the 1980s have slowly been replaced by on-line help, CDs and electronic manuals (begging the question of what to do if you can't turn on the computer to begin with). Consumers complain. In 1997, the magazine InfoWorld gave a Dumpy Award (Documentation User's MalPractice Award), based on write-ins, to the worse written manual. In general, the voters deplored the lack of "serious documentation," the "programmer work style" and the organization of the material (Foster, 100, my emphasis). In the title to his tongue-in-check article "The Last Manual You'll Ever Need!" Stephen Manes emphasizes the ephemeral nature of computer manuals. After all, with computers, there is no such thing as a "last manual." Manes ends his article: "If this [article] has mocked and ridiculed the uselessly generic documentation that comes with so many electronics products, it is about to reach its end, which will spare you a tirade about the other reasons why today's documentation generally stinks" (182, my emphasis). In an effort to remain of practical value, the manuals have become too standardized. This increases, rather than decreases, their uselessness, lack of relevance to the user who wants precise, specific instructions.
The ephemera of manuals explains, to an extent, both their authority and their vulnerability to satirists. The unnamed author cannot be attack directly. Furthermore, the manual's parental style--directive, commanding, caution-heavy—increases the reader's feelings of childishness. Readers rebel. Without a definitive target, however, the manuals themselves, rather than the technical writers or the product are attacked. This occurs despite the fact that manuals often exist in the first place to soothe fears of the appliance/product. Elizabeth Slatkin's book How to Write a Manual promotes the effectiveness of manuals, adding, "Good user manuals take a human factors approach, and often must compensate for the lack of such an approach in the product itself" (1). The need for simple instructions grows rather than decreases as products become more complex. William Wong, a writer for Electronic Design, urges this aspect of manual writing when he uses the acronym K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple Stupid. The object of manual instructions is to calm the user. Yet this object often backfires; the manual's small text and multiplicity of pictures stress, rather than soft-pedal, the product's complexity. Often, the very existence of a manual is enough to turn the user off the product.
Quandaries over manual use arise because user manuals are junctures of materiality and control. When instructed verbally, as in a training session, users can ask questions, joke with the expert, ignore him/her and otherwise make their personal authority felt. A manuals' materiality, on the other hand, lends it a much more assertive, less obvious power. Objects are defined in a single way. Steps are given and expected to be followed. Questions are answered before they are asked. The reader's ability to reason without the manual is questioned, as when the manual provides explanations and hints and gives cautions. The reader counters by mocking or exaggerating the manual's stupid explanations, satirizing the manual's steps, questioning the manual's usefulness and pointing to the manual's obsolesce.
Understanding the humorous, aggressive quality of readership in regards to manuals is important to the history of books. Through readers' reactions to manuals, we can examine readers' responses to other types of writing. Writers of print culture have long acknowledged the problem of tracking down the "demand" side of readership. Just because it is out there doesn't mean it is being read or received as the author intended; reader-response theorists like Norman Holland, Elizabeth Long and Janice Radway have long postulated readerly involvement in the text. Holland put forward the concept of "white spaces" out of which the reader creates his or her own interpretation. Readers' reactions to manuals give credence to these otherwise elusive theoretical and sociological conjectures. Manual mockery is prevalent in our culture; people ridicule manuals, ignore them, throw them away; how might readers react to other kinds of material? May we postulate an equal degree of rebelliousness, a deliberate misuse of texts in other reading experiences? As Lane Stiles suggests in "Packaging Literature for the High Schools: From the Riverside Literature Series to Literature and Life," High School students have long formed their own opinions over assigned reading. In her article, "Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of Women's Reading in Late-Victorian America," Barbara Sicherman successfully illustrates not only the various uses to which the Hamilton women put their reading but the versatility of their choices. "All reading," Richard Brodhead writes, "it may be, plays into the drive to appropriate experience vicariously" (133). Elizabeth Long seconds that idea: a book's meaning alters whenever it is read, by the same reader (who changes and therefore reads differently) or by other readers.
This image of readership is both aggressive and self-serving. These are not orderly, passive and submissive readers whose characters are shaped by an assigned canon. Such aggressive readers do not surrender to the authority of texts, whether user manuals or otherwise. Although aggressive readership is often remarked on in passing, too often it is subsumed by scholars in their search for the "dominant" culture. The heterodoxy, uniqueness, strangeness and humor of individuals is lost in a broad picture of historical occurrence. Although the broad picture is valuable, without the individual experiences, choices and actions, the historical occurrence loses its flavor and meaning, not only to us but to the people who experienced it. However difficult to trace and decipher, researchers of print culture should always keep in mind the probability of reader rebellion.
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