why i hate computers (said the blogger)

Today, sitting on the shuttle to school, I had a confrontation with technology. The gentleman sitting next to me was reading an electronic book. It irritated me… why? It didn’t impose on my space or make noise. It was a threat to my lifestyle. It was a threat to the way I like to experience and learn.

As a child, I grew up with story books. My grandfather would read to me and I could reach out and touch Little Red Riding Hood on the page. The experience incorporated my senses in such a way as to make it more memorable.

When I read, I can feel the texture of the pages on my fingertips. I can underline and write notes in the margins—reading becomes a creative process. I grasp the spine of the book in my knuckles. A book has weight in my arms and I hold it as a friend. We act together. A computer robs me of this kind of stimulation. It’s sterile and monotonous. It doesn’t distribute its weight differently at the beginning or the end of the story, as a book does. Reading something on the internet, the content is everywhere and nowhere; it is not in my arms; it is not sitting with me in that moment.

Handwriting is beautiful. It has character. I enjoy forming the swirls of my lettering and the feeling of my ballpoint on the page. Font is not the same. Your Times New Roman and my Times New Roman are the same. Computer fonts don’t express my personality the way that the curvature of my “g” does.

It’s the same reason I don’t like hair gel. Hair is beautiful in the way it plays with light and interacts with the weather. It’s pleasurable as it slides between my fingers. Hair gel is hard and stationary.

Computers sterilize the experiences of reading and writing. A computer is uniform in its presentation. It incorporates less of my person in our interaction than does a book.

My computer is not my friend.

My computer is a convenience.