This morning as I was driving our stick shift car to work I heard a noise from the clutch. I was on the freeway so I raised the windows and listened more carefully. There it was. A short white noise, like the sound of windshield wipers making a single pass. It only happened when I shifted gears.
I was wearing loafers. It was the sound of air coming out of my shoe whenever I pushed down on the clutch. There was indeed something wrong with the man-machine interface. But the problem was closer to the man than the machine.