Computer Fanatics

Computer Fanatics attend to their computers with a kind of religious devotion. They covet their computer with deep attentiveness and inventiveness. This digital play may appear arbitrary to the casual observer, but upon closer examination the fanatics selection for obsessive gaze are rich symbolic examples of their fantasies, ambitions and fears. Through the computer, the Computer Fanatic is able to express many taboo thoughts and desires. The computer is a subject which fascinates the Computer Fanatic. They monumentalise the potential of computing through the amassing of technical knowledge which they employ to solve any number of useful and useless functions. These monuments of fandom range from bizarre virtual cults to custom built computer operating systems.

Most computer fanatics are benign and some are quite scary. Take the irrational Mac user who single mindedly beleives that his machine has attained some kind of infallible perfection. How disappointed he must be when the inevidable crash, error, virus or whatever occurs. And the Linux fanatic. He will rant for hours and days about the virtues of open source (I plead guilty to this one) and yet overlook the obvious difficulties with usability (although Ubuntu is changing all that). Funnily enough it is harder to find a Microsoft Fanatic, perhaps that is because the products are so bad that no one wants the humiliation… or I could be wrong. Perhaps they are a secret society that I have yet to meet.

I am glad we live in a world of computers and passion is not a vice, but fanaticism may be holding us back.