Personal Computers with Personal Meanings scribes to two personal computer magazines, one that features news about her computer and another more general in scope. She is even beginning to think of herself as a particular kind of computer user, different from others. Although Doris does not program, she is clearly on one side of the divide separating the style of the prototypical hacker from that of the prototypical hobbyist. She is interested not in magic, but in transparent understanding: I have a friend whose son wants to be a computer wizard [the term used at her university for virtuoso programmers in the style of hackers]. For a while, I called on him whenever I had a problem. But I cant stand the way he works with the computer. He wont read the sections of the manual I show him. He sits down and starts typing. He never seems to know exactly whats going on, but somehow by instinct he nds a way to solve the problem. I cant stand it. I have stopped asking him

Doriss style recalls the rst generation of hobbyists, a style that puts a premium on transparent understanding. And she knows enough about what she enjoys in the machine to feel a sense of difference from her friends son, the incipient hacker. Most people think of a computer as one thing for all people, and so, when they become aware of this kind of differentiation, it surprises them. Doriss initial reaction was to treat it as a matter of who knew more about the computer, and then as a manifestation of arrogance on the part of the young wizard. But something more is at work here. Doris is beginning to get the idea that although she and the wizard use the same computer, she belongs to one culture and he to another.

Personal Computation and Personal Philosophy In this chapter I have tagged two different styles of relating to the computerone that focuses on magic, the other on transparencyby associating them with the culture of computer hackers and rst-generation computer hobbyists. But these relational styles have a life of their own. They exist outside of these cultures. The story of Doris and her friends son illustrates that now, within the personal computer culture, there are a multiplicity of styles. These styles enter into programming and into the computer owners feelings about what makes the machine consequential, what makes it satisfying and beautiful. I discovered that they also nd expression in something else as well: how individuals use the computer to think about other questions, among them metaphysical ones. 179 180

Chapter 5 Children nd in the question Are computers alive? a way to talk about the line between computers and people. Adults dont. Nonetheless, they are affected by the questions that stand behind questions such as What is life? What makes us special? How do computers challenge our definition of ourselves? One way of getting adults to talk about these things is to ask not about life but about the possibility of machine intelligence. And here different styles of relating to the computer correspond to different kinds of answers.