Let me admit it right up front: I named my iMac less
than a day after it arrived. Trusty Zachary has sat with me
through countless hours of writing and checkbook balancing,
saw me through the tax season, and even has encouraged me
in developing my chess game. He is more a trusted personal
friend than any sort of digital servant, and over time he
has developed a personality and presence I no longer can
ignore.
While I am admitting such things, I also should note that
my fianc and I have named my car, too. Weighing in at
almost 70,000 miles and sporting very few problems beyond
the typical oil changes and muffler replacements, my little
metallic green Geo Metro is Bernie the Putt Putt, the
little guy who never gives up. I talk to him at times
during rough stretches of traffic, and I often pat his
flank or his dashboard after a good day of road work.
What I also know is this: if polls hold true, many if not
most of you have named your Mac and your car, and you too
treat them like something akin to the simpleton savants of
the family--a bit too slow on the uptake to be in on
everything the family does, but who nonetheless are
slow-witted buddies always there and ready to work with you
at a moment's notice. You might cringe when either has to
go to the shop, almost as though a frightened child or pet
were being left alone in a hospital. You might rationalize
certain quirks or oddities (malfunctions, to be honest),
seeing in them the traits that make them unique.
Why do we name certain machines yet leave others to their
cold inanimate existence? It cannot be a matter of mere
usefulness or proximity. Imagine a person whose household
was full of such "enlivened" appliances. The mind reels at
the thought of Tootsie the Toaster, Larry the Lawnmower,
Oliver Oven, and Lucy Lamp. And why stop there: how about
Ernie the Electric Razor, Patricia Palm Pilot, and Stuart
Space Heater? Far from quaint, I seriously suspect that an
inclination to become friendly with all one's appliances
might be grounds for psychiatric intervention. Still, most
of us retain the need to name certain machines or tools, be
they Zachary and Bernie for me, my mom's old Pontiac
Bessie, or B.B. King's Lucille (a guitar that gets a seat
next to him on every plane flight he makes, by the way).
(ed. Note- wouldn't you keep a guitar close at hand that
survived a barroom burning down? TDH)
Michael S. Malone offers a starting point into
understanding this phenomenon. In a recent "Silicon
Insider" column, Malone finds himself baffled by the appeal
of the Palm Pilot. He notes, for instance, that "some of
[his] editors continuously fondle their Palm Pilots as if
they were rosaries. . . . The device has become an
extension of their imaginations," even though he sees his
own Palm Pilot as "nothing more than a Day-Timer and phone
list with a crappy data entry language." Malone eventually
comes to this conclusion:
"So what is the key to the Palm Pilot's appeal? I think it
is somethingirrational, and deeply human, that cannot be
captured by a balance sheet. Something at the nexus of
being not too complicated, not too intrusive, not too
powerful, and not too pretty, appeals to us in deep,
visceral ways."
"Call it the Volkswagen Bug Effect; we identify with
limitations because we are limited creatures. . . ."
Whether he is right in his assessment of the specific
limitations of such things is irrelevant. Instead, the
crucial point is his observation of the intimacy between
certain tools and their users, an intimacy arising out of
identification with that tool. In the same way we root for
Charlie Brown or Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, suggests
Malone, we like to take up the cause of the cute, lovable,
underachieving machine.
That initial attraction is only part of the story, though.
When we name certain types of machines, something further
happens: we give to them parts of our own personalities. A
certain part of oneself, perhaps a part repressed or
under-attended, is projected onto that machine. The
personality one finds in an iMac or in one's car is a
mirror held up to a little-known part of the self. In the
case of B.B. King's Lucille, this is manifest. Named after
a woman who died in a fire King himself barely escaped, I
suspect Lucille is a projection of what might have been. He
could have died there, as did the woman Lucille. His guitar
(and his talent expressed through it) are perhaps a bit of
survivor's guilt or maybe even the hope of life after
death.
Of course, this is only conjecture. Closer to home, I do
see what Bernie and Zachary represent to me. Bernie, the
tiny Geo in a world of SUVs and semis, is the scrappy
little guy who goes toe to toe with the big man on campus.
Bernie is not afraid to zip past a semi, even as his
acceleration begins to falter a bit these days and the
semi's backdraft blasts at him the entire way. To be
honest, his everyday minor heroics are the stuff I wish my
life were made of. Zack the iMac is similar in his
constant, unwavering companionship and help. They are there
when I need them, and despite their limitations, they
usually come through for me in the clutch.
That sentiment is the adult version of
the child's feeling for the teddy bear. A child might
have a room of stuffed animals, and he or she might
play often with all of them, but usually only a select
few become more than toys. Bill Watterson's comic
strip "Calvin and Hobbes" expressed this perfectly.
Calvin is the suburban child with almost everything he
wants, but it is the beat-up stuffed tiger who makes
his life complete. Hobbes is friend and
co-conspirator, but he also is Calvin's conscience,
intellectual challenger, and protector from the
monsters of the night.
Does Calvin know Hobbes is only a stuffed animal?
Watterson's strip is ambiguous, since Hobbes only appears
as a toy when other people are around. But when alone with
Calvin, he is every bit as real as the boy himself. Does
the child know that special toy is not a real person? In
some ways, I suppose yes, for I recall that I treated my
favorite teddy bear quite a bit differently from the family
dog. All the same, it was that teddy bear who heard all the
secret confessions, whom I turned to when I was sad or
afraid, and who endured all the battering and tough times
of earliest childhood.
Those favorite stuffed animals emerge from childhood far
worse for wear, often missing eyes and sporting bald
patches, full of mended seams and numerous stains. Perhaps
this too is what we as adults find in those obsolete,
beat-up, and hard-worked tools onto which we project
personality: constant companions, protectors and champions,
sharers in our work and suffering. They have traveled
through life with us,
absorbing the greater part of the heavy labors we receive,
and they have survived as we survive. They may be slower,
more scarred, and more cranky than they were in days past,
but they continue to work, and they remain ever present in
our times of need.
Such a tool, then, deserves no less than to be seen for
what it truly is: an extension of oneself, a piece of the
multifaceted richness each
of us is to overflowing, and a part of the human spirit
made manifest in the stuff of everyday existence.