More Than the Sum of Their Parts

More Than the Sum of Their Parts
Machines are just parts put together, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have personalities. Machines all have a purpose, and therefore will always possess little quirks, strange habits and oddly human characteristics.
  Computers are helpful, calculating, and rather cold, giving us information and helping us with our homework, but possessing no empathy for lost work and no understanding of why it is so important we find what we need. All tasks are the same to a computer, from typing up a suicide note to emailing a grandparent. Computers are that vacuously upbeat person everyone knows, very popular, very friendly, but cold-hearted if turned to for support.
Pencil sharpeners are greedy. They are forever hungry for nutrients in the form of a writing implement. The new electric pencil sharpeners are three year old little boys, always jumping and buzzing and asking for MORE! While the old manually used sharpeners are angry, demented old men, demanding and for food even if he has just been fed and gnawing slowly and suspiciously whilst eying the hand that fed him.
For those of us who have used a tuner for instruments, a tuner is a fussy little woman with a shrill voice and an ear for mistakes. What’s that? Your cello seems a bit flat to me! Are you even sure that’s a D? It sounds like a C sharp to me. A very sharp C indeed! In fact, many are forced to yell at their tuner, “What?! What do you want from me! I’m very sorry I cannot satisfy you, you miserable little cow, but I am trying my best! My fine tuners are wound so tight they are about to pop off!” However, our fussing is useless, as the little light on the tuner bounces to and fro everywhere but on the “in tune” mark.
Of course, not all machines are so unpleasant. Many have quite lovely personalities. Lamps, for example. Lamps are the gracious, caring illuminators of the world. They stand over children reading books, adults stressed over paperwork, and the elderly gazing at old...