The Soul Of A Machine

Computers. I just can't stop thinking about them. From my pretty little sixteen gig smartphone, to my best friend's brother's "Giant Black Stallion of Hate" the terabyte capacity, utterly immobile monster it is, they centre in my thoughts.

I've been reading a short story called "A Logic Called Joe" written in the nineteen sixties. It features a 'logic,' what we would now call a computer, that explains concisely exactly how to perform any task, from getting away with murder, to robbing banks, to seeming as though you aren't drunk to your disgruntled wife.

Joe in the story is more or less alive, and performs many of the functions that google serves today.

Another short story by Neil Gaiman that I was reading, likens PCs to black magic, the main character having to sacrifice a pigeon in a pentagram to run his evil Dell that smokes at the edges and fills the room with a blood red light.

Computers fascinate me. Cars can grow souls in some people's opinion, the way they purr, growl, accelerate and how they take corners. Why not computers?

Computers seem just as alive as cars, if not more in certain respects. They hum, they make a noise when you open them or start them up, they think about hard problems, they complain, demanding new anti virus software, they breath through their exhaust vents, the portable ones get hungry, sending you alerts that their battery is low, they remember things that are important, like your favourite websites, and forget things that aren't, like a brief conversation on Facebook chat.

They get sick, and you have to take them to a doctor, sometimes they die. They talk to each other over the internet, perhaps they have secrets. They get warm when you use them. Perhaps they don't like to be left alone.

Personification is an important part of being a person. I know computers are not really alive. But if we can't imagine a world where they could be, then they never will.