Aetheric Research, Ltd.

ESR’s seminal work on the jargon and culture of the common hacker, The Jargon File, defines a significant chunk of hacker folklore.  Quantum Bogodynamics (a play off of the existing field of quantum chromodynamics, which describes quark interactions) is a folk theory deriving from the inconsistent behavior of hardware and software in the presence of those not sufficiently inculcated into the mysteries of How Things Work.  Usually these would be suits–that is, upper management of dubious technical ability–but often enough those who work on the front lines of the IT world will notice a significant bogon flux around certain users.

The bogon is a notional particle that is a charge carrier for entropy, essentially.  Where there are significant bogon levels, machines break down in various ways–they refuse to boot properly; software may throw various errors; printers will jam.  There are enough anecdotal cases of a simple desk move solving problems with nearby hardware–moving the user away from the machine’s proximity stopped the machine from throwing fits–that variations on this hypothesis are widely believed by significant numbers of technical personnel.  

This may be part of the notional reason behind the aura of competence effect; technical personnel are heavy emitters of antibogons (c.f. ‘cluons’ in the original jargon) and as such can purge a recalcitrant system in short order by being nearby.  This also explains why certain formerly technically competent personnel, when promoted to nontechnical managerial positions, lose the ability to perform these feats; being in meetings with various suits surpresses their antibogon production.  By analogy with a breeder reactor, these meetings may cause a formerly clueful person to begin to emit bogons much like the other suits involved.

Bogon production may be related to emotional intensity, as well; the more upset or angered the bogon producer is at the situation, the more likely it is that some critical component will start to fail.  This explains the prevalence of errors in product demonstrations.

As of yet, there has been no literature regarding bogon shielding, but a 6′ air gap between the bogon producer and any component of the machine under diagnosis or treatment usually appears to do the trick.  The effectiveness of sheet lead has not yet been evaluated.

Various occupations have bits and pieces of folklore associated with their work–gremlins, from last week’s FFF, were originally a tale told by pilots and aircraft mechanics before they were fuzzy creatures with a problem with midnight snacks.  The computer world is no exception; various technical occupations have their own bits and pieces of folklore that are handed down over time and which fill the same kind of explicative niche for these people as the gremlins did for mechanics.

The Aura of Competence is an experience common to most support technicians who have worked in the field for any length of time.  The support tech will show up to fix a problem that the customer has reported, and the simple act of showing up is “enough” to make things run smoothly again.  

Numerous “explanations” for this effect exist–some of which involve notional particles called “bogons” which are charge-carriers for “bogosity,” the principle that makes things break down.  The highly selective nature of this kind of entropy nearly always strikes certain select users, and always at times when they were “not doing anything, [they] swear!”

Presumably, the technician acts much like the moderating medium in a nuclear reactor, then, and inhibits the bogon flux, thus allowing the machine to operate smoothly again.

Another variation is when a process (registering someone on a website, say, or printing a document) continually fails, and no amount of coaxing by the user will make the process successfully complete.  Again, the technician shows up and either performs the “exact same” actions, or watches the user do so–and the process succeeds.  The user will generally protest that it had only “just” started working when the technician showed up.

This variant is rather like the koan of the LISP machine, in that the process will only work when someone of sufficient understanding is present.  

This effect may be found in other sufficiently technical disciplines, whenever there is equipment whose functioning is beyond the ability of a layman to fully understand.  Rationally, the users in all the above cases must not have observed some difference in the machine’s setup or the procedure; however, users are not usually very rational and will seek to rationalize that the technician’s presence must have had some kind of magic effect.  Accordingly, it may be in the technician’s professional best interests to play along; users tend to become more than a little resentful if they’re informed that the problem is all in their head, and some of these users may write the technician’s paycheck.