The Look of Love
- The Look of Love - Press release
- The Silence of Love – Jean-Paul Martinon
- Here’s Looking at You – Peter Cross
- Today I Saw a Computer Lying Dormant – Patricia Scanlan
Today I Saw a Computer Lying Dormant – Patricia Scanlan
Rear Window Publications
1997 ISBN 0 9521040 7 5
© Patricia Scanlan
Today I saw a computer lying dormant produce a shaky handwritten message; one word tentatively and roughly assembling itself at a time. I came to notice the screen when it read “bondage,” followed by “better,” “freedom,” “than,” “loveless,” “bondage”… The combination of the bad humanoid script and the message which took me a few minutes to grasp, given its innuendoed possibilities if read, as read by me, as “bondage better freedom” and “than”, which was followed by the word “loveless,” the latter appearing syllabically; “love” presenting its face firstly.
This for me was the most profound thing I’d seen a computer do, ostensibly all on its own, sitting there idling with thoughts on bondage, love, and lovelessness: passively the Macintosh had effectively invaded the world of feeling. It was saying more than most people would dare communicate to their colleagues or openly contemplate in a lifetime on the office floor. The love-loveless-freedom debate was awakened in me in a untidy work-space, filled with half-finished meals, knives, and forks askew, an ash-tray half-full, coats strewn lazily to one side and an idling grey screen computer in a corner cobbling, almost morsing a message to me.
