Monitors inhabited by the devil
Earlier today I went to a local business to conduct a financial transaction. I gave the man my account information and he entered it into his computer. He was typing it into some sort of a secure web connection to the main servers back at their server farm. The connection must’ve been lagging or something, because it was taking the page several seconds to load. What happened next shocked me with such disbelief that I didn’t even register a visible response, much less say anything.
This man, in professional business attire, started smacking the hell out of his monitor, mumbling something about, “C’mon, hurry up.” His monitor! What was he thinking? Does he even know how computers work? For one, you shouldn’t ever be smacking around computers anyway, but theoretically if smacking them around did help (like it maybe does with some electric devices), you’d have to, you know, smack the actual computer, not the monitor. The lag that was going on was clearly a network issue, it wasn’t a video issue. Him smacking around the monitor made absolutely no sense.
I started thinking to myself, “Wow, this isn’t a person I should be giving my money to, is it.” But it was too late. He already had my check, and he was slapping that monitor like a fundamentalist Salem preacher smacking around a person inhabited by the devil. I just sat back, watching the spectacle, until the transaction finally went through, and I left the place in stunned silence.
January 20th, 2007 at 10:52
You don’t really think he rationally thought it was going to do any good, did you? Most likely it was just a more physical version of yelling at the machine, something I’m sure you’ve done (I know I do it). As Dennett points out, we humans seem to be wired to see intentional agents everywhere. So when a piece of machinery malfunctions, it’s natural for us to see it as if it were inhabited by a homunculus that was trying to frustrate us.
So while smacking the monitor may not have been the smartest thing to do, it’s quite understandable, like the scene in Office Space where they trash the printer.
January 20th, 2007 at 11:08
It’s not understandable to me – he’s potentially ruining a nice piece of equipment with no possible benefits. That’s destructive behavior. I have yelled at my machine on occasion, and of course I realize it isn’t really doing any good, just making me feel better, but it’s also not hurting my computer.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:20
On the other hand, a few light taps isn’t going to harm your computer, either. I mean, when he gets out the baseball bat, I’d be concerned, but if it’s a CRT, I’d bet you’d hurt yourself if you tried to break a monitor through brute force. With your hands.