mostly, I just liked the title...

[alexr_rwx]

The Rudnick is switching into Social Sciences Researcher Mode again. Mostly because he's been reading Marty's copy of Sex/Machine, which is this big collection of cultural studies essays about gender/technology interactions...

Not that you guys are any sort of representative sample, but... could you comment up some responses? I'm curious:

- Does your computer have a name?
- Do you tend to anthropomorphize your computer?
- Do you normally name and/or anthropomorphize your things?

Comments

[rheavatarin.livejournal.com]

1) Yes, I name my computers. The desktop is McKie and its virtual machine is Tria. My laptop is Gar and its virtual machine is Havvy.

2) McKie I do sometimes. I try to refer to him by his name as often as possible. My poor laptop has had so many formats and operating systems on it, I think it is a little schitzo and doesn't know what is going on.

3) Really, my computers are all I anthropomorphize. Though my sister has taken the car I had in HS and officially dubbed it the "Rossmobile" and has personalized it to heaven, hell, and back again.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Funky -- you've named a virtual machine... does Tria have a separate personality/being from McKie?

So not only can a computer (a machine pretending to be intelligent, more or less) be attributed a name, but a program pretending to be a computer can get a name as well...

Virtual Machines

[rheavatarin.livejournal.com]

Oh certainly they can have different personalities. I'll take Havvy as an example. Gar has his own problems, but Havvy seems to take them to a new level. Havvy is running win98 for gaming purposes, but can't seem to actually run them very well. Most especially Havvy has problems connecting to the internet and problems with sound. Tria, on the other hand is very much more forgiving. She's running w2k, also for gaming purposes, but seems to have no problems finding all my hardware. Even when I randomly connected extra hardware to her she took it in stride.