Yahoo! gave us a welcome packet last term. Among other things, it had a white cuboidal box with a few holes on top. I thought it's just a placeholder for papers inside. Curiosity made me tear it open. Whoa! An electronic circuit, after so long! Application? Wait and watch. I put the circuit on my room table. One night, I came back to the room and switched on the light. The shout "Yaahoooo" greeted me. The next morning when there was sufficient sunlight, it exclaimed "Yaahooo". This light triggered ckt has been my constant companion ever since. I place it in my drawer or my bag; and hear it say "Yaahooo". The New Hire Orientation at Yahoo! was filled with intermitten "Yaahoo" cries from multiple welcome packets. It brings alive the child in anyone who tries to subject it to different combinations of darkness and light. Inanimate things communicate. The other day, friend X was upset with friend Y. I was working on my laptop then. I made the software "Word Web" say in its amusing voice, "Dear X, Y is sorry. Know that Y loves you." It cheered X up. When animate things find it difficult to communicate, inanimate things that communicate come handy.
ADDITION ON 25th APRIL: Got to know y'day that the Yaahooooo sound that the ckt makes is a characteristic Yahooo Yodle. It goes Yaaahoo oooo. In the all-hands meet at Sunnyvale last week, the President Sue made the entire audience Yodle along with her :).
1 comment:
there is another take to the animation of inanimate things.
Isoda, a critic of japanese literature, talks about "the living inorganic and the dead organic" to describe the theme in Abe Kobo's "the face of another". Its a story where a scientist creates a mask after an experiment goes terribly wrong leaving him brutely scarred. the mask was a way he could bridge the distance with others, especially his wife. however slowly the mask takes on a personality of it's own and takes over the life of the protagonist.
on some level we all use a 'mask' of inanimate objects to fill in the empty spaces in our lives. Abe was someone keenly aware of the danger of the inanimate or inorganic taking over the world of the organic. What he tries to do is create ways of communication between organic beings...we need to learn such ways.
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