KEY POINTS:
You can understand it, from a Chinese point of view.
Notwithstanding the fact they invented just about everything worth inventing, the luckless inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom have endured much unpleasantness down the years.
Anyone in China today will tell you it was a grave mistake to bury
the Terracotta Army. The rash internment of this elite force allowed Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes to barge in, unopposed, and generally spend the next few Dynasties wreaking havoc as only a Mongol horde can.
Eventually, the Chinese did take the necessary Steppes to get rid of Mr Khan, only to find another bunch of visitors disagreeably keen to start the Opium Wars.
And if those Ossetian indignities weren't enough, consider the grave embarrassment the good citizens of China must have felt when they heard the West chortling about the Eunuch Admiral.
It can't be easy getting a reputation as the only country on earth to put castration before navigation - especially since the custom of nautical dismemberment meant that only (Un)able Seamen got to sail around the world before Magellan.
Given such historic humiliations, we should perhaps understand why the Chinese decided to get their own back by pulling a few swifties during the opening ceremony at the Olympic Games. Even so, a sense of betrayal and outrage has followed the shock revelation that many of the spectacular fireworks which climaxed that event weren't fireworks at all!
They were, in fact, a binary fraud, a piece of cyber-sophistry. Convincing as they seemed, those fireworks were nothing more than a computer-generated digital hallucination.
Through some Gatesian sleight-of-hand, the Chinese turned a string of 000s and 1111s into a pyrotechnic orgasm - that even wobbled a bit, as if filmed from a helicopter.
And that wasn't the only time we got Mao Tse Stung. Worse again was discovering that cute little girl in the bright red dress didn't sing a thing!!!! She was, as the Chinese would say, My Ming it. Another little girl, hidden away in a vault with the Terracotta Warriors, apparently because she wasn't cute enough, did all the singing.
We probably shouldn't feel too sorry for this second lass. She'll likely be signed by an entrepreneurial impresario, dubbed "The Voice Too Beautiful To Be Seen", and go on to make a fortune with her first lush and computer-enhanced CD, largely of Chinese remakes of Gracie Fields' greatest hits.
However, as the victims of this massive subterfuge, we are entitled to feel a little sorry for ourselves. But not, it must be said, for long.
Once our initial fury's passed, it should become clear that the techno-trickery which the Chinese have employed does have obvious advantages.
Reality becomes an entirely plastic thing, as malleable as clay in our computational grasp. And the benefits of this PC/DCeit should work as well for us - whoever we are - as they do for the Chinese.
Suppose, for example, you're Winston Peters, beset with allegations of malfeasance and baubletude. With a click of the mouse, you could computer-enhance the Spencer Trust (complete with receipts for Bob Jones) leaving it bathed in a celestial glow of Presbyterian rectitude.
Or suppose you were Bill English. You could computer-enhance those security tapes to reveal your interrogator, cunningly concealed behind Mark Sainsbury's moustache, as none other than Helen Clark - with hand on heart, if you had time to write the program.
Alternatively, if you were Helen you could computer-enhance Bill's reckless replies so we clearly hear him say, "My soon-to-be-replaced leader, John Key, is going to sell Kiwibank the day after we're elected and use the money to buy us all new boots, the better to grind the faces of the poor into our hidden agenda."
And if such shenanigans aren't your cup of tea, suppose something a little closer to home, in that area of life where few of us are as confident as we pretend.
That's right - the troubled realm of love! Few facets of the human condition are so fraught with beryl. If we're honest, most of us would admit that romance is an unhappy collision of appetite and ability which, generally, yields little other than the consummation of our own embarrassment.
But suppose, as we winnow our way through the cornfield that is the opposite sex, that we could, by some mysterious method, computer-enhance our own prowess - or another's pleasure.
Quite how we'd do it is another matter. But if wearing a pair of Buck Rogers-style helmets, each with weird new-age-type-light-bulb attachments sticking out the sides, is the price we'd need to pay for swooning sighs of satisfaction then pay it we most certainly would.
Let us therefore put aside all Western pride and make the great leap forward into cyberspace. Let us embrace Beijing's innovation and our own computer-enhanced companions.
Only timidity prevents us enjoying as many fireworks in the boudoir as the Chinese did in their stadium - unless, of course, that's a computer-enhancement as well.
Maybe the entire Olympics are ... No. no, that's going too far ...
