More Than the Sum of Their Parts
Machines are just parts put together, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have personalities. Machines all have a purpose, and therefore will always possess little quirks, strange habits and oddly human characteristics.
Computers are helpful, calculating, and rather cold, giving us information and helping us with our homework, but possessing no empathy for lost work and no understanding of why it is so important we find what we need. All tasks are the same to a computer, from typing up a suicide note to emailing a grandparent. Computers are that vacuously upbeat person everyone knows, very popular, very friendly, but cold-hearted if turned to for support.
Pencil sharpeners are greedy. They are forever hungry for nutrients in the form of a writing implement. The new electric pencil sharpeners are three year old little boys, always jumping and buzzing and asking for MORE! While the old manually used sharpeners are angry, demented old men, demanding and for food even if he has just been fed and gnawing slowly and suspiciously whilst eying the hand that fed him.
For those of us who have used a tuner for instruments, a tuner is a fussy little woman with a shrill voice and an ear for mistakes. What’s that? Your cello seems a bit flat to me! Are you even sure that’s a D? It sounds like a C sharp to me. A very sharp C indeed! In fact, many are forced to yell at their tuner, “What?! What do you want from me! I’m very sorry I cannot satisfy you, you miserable little cow, but I am trying my best! My fine tuners are wound so tight they are about to pop off!” However, our fussing is useless, as the little light on the tuner bounces to and fro everywhere but on the “in tune” mark.
The Research paper on Computer Based Training Business Interchange
COMPUTER BASED TRAINING (CBT) BUSINESS INTERCHANGE Dallas Baptist University Spring 1999 MISM 6330, Section 01 Database Management Systems Instructor: Mary Braswell, MBA Mary L. Everitt 19 April 1999 Table of Contents Introduction Computer-based training (CBT) is an all-encompassing term used to describe any computer-delivered training including CD-ROM and the World Wide Web. CBT courseware ...
Of course, not all machines are so unpleasant. Many have quite lovely personalities. Lamps, for example. Lamps are the gracious, caring illuminators of the world. They stand over children reading books, adults stressed over paperwork, and the elderly gazing at old photographs, and they open up their mouths and light, the most beautiful thing in the universe, comes pouring out. Lamps are unobtrusive and handy, always willing to give you exactly what you need in order to get anything done.
Another wonderful machine is the radio. The radio is much different from the lamp; the radio is the loud, bumbling, raucous friend everyone loves. Radios play and sing for us whenever we ask, always ready to entertain. Awkward silences? Impossible with this outrageous party guest! Indeed, radios are one of the most essential people at the party.
Yes, there are many great machines, and there are evil machines. No, evil is not an overstatement. Some machines have decided within themselves, probably many years ago in a fit of rage, to ruin our lives. One of these horrid beings is the alarm clock. The alarm clock is especially untrustworthy because it pretends to be your friend. “Hey, buddy! Time to get up!” is what your alarm clock tells you. But your alarm clock wants to rip away your dreams, steal away your peace, and scream at you until you are forced to physical violence, punching your alarm clock right in its face! No, your alarm clock doesn’t care about you. In fact your alarm clock wants you to miss the ‘off’ button and hit the ‘snooze’ button instead. Then, not only will you be late for your job/class/meeting/most important event of your life, but it gets to shriek at you twice!
Machines not only have personalities, but motives, dreams, purposes in this life. Machines are more than the sum of their gears and parts; they are non-living, non-breathing beings with as many characteristics to define them as any human.
The Essay on James Agee Lamp Life Oil
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," was written by James Agee and Walker Evans. The story is about three white families of tenant farmers in rural Alabama. The photographs in the beginning have no captions or quotations. They are just images of three tenant farming families, their houses, and possessions. "The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are ...