A recent study from a team at the University of Michigan has found that the printer is being weird.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” said the team leader, Dr. Sakina Holland. “It’s just being weird.”
The study, which took place over the course of three months at the university’s technology center, was manifold in its phases of data collection.
“First we just tried printing,” explained Dr. Holland. “It wasn’t coming out, so we opened up settings from the computer and were like, ‘Maybe it’s something going on in here?’”
“That was the first sign it was being weird,” added Dr. Holland.
But it didn’t stop there.
“Eventually I was kind of like, maybe we should open up some of its little drawers?” said Dr. Holland. “It was scary touching it because I thought it was going to break, but it did not. Or maybe it is broken, I really don’t know.”
Luckily, with a team of research assistants by her side, Dr. Holland didn’t have to face all of the ups and downs of the study on her own.
“There was this one point where we pressed print, and the printer started making this sort of whirring noise like it was going to print,” said one graduate student, Jesse Zhang. “But then it didn’t.”
“There were many times I suspected it was being weird, and then times such as the whirring noise where I doubted myself,” said Dr. Holland. “But we really turned a corner when a little red triangle with an exclamation mark in it showed up on the screen of the printer.”
“I said, ‘Okay, that’s weird,’” recalled Dr. Holland. “Also why does it have to be a little red triangle? Why can’t it be a written out explanation of what’s wrong using words? This machine was made for humans to use, right?”
Following the red triangle incident, the team was able to confirm that the printer was being weird, but Dr. Holland admits she has been hesitant to share the results of her research publically.
“Please just take our word that it’s being weird,” said Dr. Holland. “Because if someone comes and effortlessly prints on the first try, I’m going to be seriously fucked up.”
