Are computers male or female?
By By Michelle Blaylock, Mom’s Corner
I read a joke the other day about whether a computer is “male” or “female.” The joke starts out that in a French class the teacher explained that inanimate objects are classified as male or female. One of the students asks what a computer is classified as. The teacher says she doesn’t know and divides them into two groups (males in one, females in the other) to discuss the issue. The males decide computers are female because:
1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. The message “Bad command or file name” is about as informative as, “If you don’t know why I’m mad at you, then I’m certainly not going to tell you.”
4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval;
5. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
However, the female group decides that computers are male because:
1. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless;
2. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem;
3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model;
4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on;
5. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the night.
Personally, I don’t know if they are male or female. I just think that our computers at home hate me. I frequently whine (yes, whine) something to that effect. As always my husband replies with, “Michelle, it is a computer. It doesn’t “hate,” “love” or have any type of emotions. It works solely on calculations.”
At this point I suppress the urge to whack him over the head with the laptop and return to trying to be patient while the computer does its necessary calculations. I personally find it incredibly aggravating when I search for something that to me is perfectly innocent and end up with something that is just obscene.
Several years ago for Christmas I was looking for a particular doll for one of my daughters. I typed in “baby dolls.” Um, that was a really bad thing to do. Since this was before many of the parental locks, firewalls, pop-up blockers we have now, I not only ended up with web sites that I didn’t want, I also had pop-ups I didn’t want.
Take this article for instance, I’m trying desperately to type it and the computer won’t always show the letters I’m typing and the cursor keeps jumping all over the screen.
Of course, if I tell my husband this, he will come up with some logical explanation. Um, maybe computers are male after all.
