“Clearly, we struck a nerve. Not only do you love to write haiku, but it appears that many have strong feelings about losing your work, wasting your time and rebooting.” - Salon.com
The email arrives, claiming:
Here are actual error messages seen on the computer screens in Japan, where they are written as Haiku, the brilliantly condensed poetic statement in just 17 syllables. Compare them with ‘Your computer has performed an illegal operation’”
It transpires the email is now urban legend.
They are really from a contest run by Salon.com:
The world of high-tech has been called soulless — a charge that is borne out by on-screen error messages like “abort/retry/fail?” and “404 — file not found.”
Below, a modest attempt at change — an error message in the form of a haiku poem.”
Readers were invited to submit error messages written as haiku poems. The haiku is a three-line poem in the 5/7/5 form (first line 5 syllables, second line 7, third line 5).”
The result? A web-email ‘hoax’ classic, still doing the rounds seven years later. Maybe hoax is too strong a word. Intent was not to defraud, just rewrite history a little. The messages are delightful, after all.
To have no errors
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy — Brian M. Porter
- The Web site you seek cannot be located, but countless more exist.
- Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
- Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.
- Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
- Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
- Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
- Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.
- A crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone.
- Three things are certain: death, taxes, and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
- You step in the stream, but the water has moved on. This page is not here.
- Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, but we never will.
- Having been erased, the document you’re seeking must now be retyped.
- Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Taste the originals at Salon.com Challenge No. 4: Haiku error messages
Haiku is not difficult to find on the Internet. Google supplies about three million web pages in return for a simple “Haiku”.
A thicket of summer grass
Is all that remains
Of the dreams and ambitions
Of ancient warriors.
Basho
Well, I’m going to lose you here. Follow this link to a world where nothing exists that is not serene in seventeen syllables ~ www.toyomasu.com
