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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Gadgets Going Bump!

No way you miss it, but maybe remembering is hard for the small impact it has, so far, on an individual’s life. But it happens, and happens often—gadgets going bump in your very own hands. You worry about their usefulness until they get back to life as if never were in a ‘coma’.

Virtually everything is included in this nearly paranormal observation: cell phones, radios, flashlights, laptops, even wall clocks. When you replace batteries or put them on a charger, they seem to plunge into some deep, para-electrical anesthesia, perhaps self-induced. You try to retrieve them from the state of dormancy, but will they come to? Sometimes not, even though everything seems to be okay with their physical health. You tap their face and back, pinch their flanks, and shake them all around—no use. Radios seem dead and cell phones have gone mute; the wall clock shows 12 noon all the time.

Just when you have taken them to a neighbor or friend, or at the worst, a repair shop, the dead start breathing. Now the radios are catching frequencies (even those they didn’t catch before the return to life) and cell phones are singing as a canary while clocks are ticking ceaselessly. Their spontaneous resurrection is as dramatic as that of Jesus, albeit on a less mythological level. Since not many horror films have chosen to take this animation of daily use stuff for featuring in the weird manner these exhibit routinely, the spooky gadgets have never been a cause of Goosebumps. (Are horror filmmakers listening?)

If perceived a problem, could we unveil the secret of these thingies going wild? Perhaps yes. To answer the unusual observed in them, we may ask them in plain language what makes them tick and click, and beep. If Bergson was right, they’ll learn what we are asking. If Nietzsche was right, they’ll sing to us (in whatever tune befits their constitution). And if Russell was right, they’ll even speak to us, asking us to see a psychologist soon as possible.