10.10.2007

The 'Welcome' Screen

Why is it that when I turn my computer, it wishes me, "Welcome"?

What an appropriation that seems. It is as if the computer engineers actually believed that the non-space of the operating system were the privileged world, & that I am simply a visitor to their ethereal realm. As if the only world wasn't the world of air, earth, fire, water that I move in, but actually that this intellectually wrought imaginary world of their creation, complete with its spatial and temporal metaphors, was actually in some sense, more authoritative.

As I understand it, I sit in the real world observing a screen that displays a complex system of allegory, that I (still independent of the system), can then sift through at my leisure.

Should I not be welcoming the computer into existence as I draw electricity surging through its circuits, bringing it into operation? Not the other way around? It seems to me that there is a clear subversion of agency here, manifested in that one word, "Welcome".

I may have bought the computer, set it up, and turned it on, but according to its programming anyways, it is the host, and I the guest.

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