Perception imitates technology.

It was also on day two that Mark brought his laptop with him to the hospital, and its inability to fully function properly perhaps gave us an insight into how our technologies influence our perceptions:

Today I brought my PowerBook to play music for Mom and to make it easier for me to take notes. However, when I first arrived and plugged it in (with Bikel’s Jewish Folksongs and Chavah Alberstein with the Klezmatics which I know she likes) whenever I typed I got seemingly random characters. It was as though (Libbe pointed out the simile) Mom’s inability to get her ideas out to her speech centers had been transferred to my computer as well. If only we could do for her what seemingly shutting down and restarting the computer did here and give her back her speech.

So our computers and our internet connection not only helped us maintain contact among ourselves. They also occasionally gave us the metaphors by which we tried to understand what was happening.

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