20190314.0430

The desktop computer I have at home--that I have had since living in The City and that has moved with me thence to the wind-swept plains and to the Texas Hill Country--has an annoying habit of having its monitor cut out at odd intervals. It does not matter what I am doing; the screen loses its connection with whatever is going on and goes blank for a few moments or a few more before returning to its display as if nothing had happened. And I am vexed by it; I lose track of where I was in videos or in putting words into pixels on pages such as this one. I already have enough trouble with the latter (given research rapture and similar phenomena) that I do not do well with the additional, externally imposed interruptions.
Were I given to the kind of magical thinking that endows inanimate objects with agency and intellect, I might assert that I have somehow annoyed the computer into acting as it does. I might think I had offered it some petty slight that is not enough for it to quit on me altogether but is enough to induce it to falter just enough to attract my attention and annoy but not quite enough to prompt me to look for a replacement. (As with any device, I will have to replace it at some point, but that point is not yet, and I am not looking forward to having to do so. The expense and hassle are things I do not need at the moment, if I ever actually do.) I admit that I have acted in such ways with supervisors from time to time, needling them with things after they have annoyed me but still doing well enough in my job that they could not justify firing me for doing so--and if I have done it, it is not difficult for me to imagine that others have, or that a machine, given sentience, would. (And it occurs to me that an Asenion robot might be able to act in such a way...)
Were I so inclined to that thinking, though, I might also note that such thinking also tends to hold that the manner of use affects the sentience that emerges in objects that acquire it. So if my machine might make itself a petty annoyance in an occasional fit of pique, it might also do as I have done many times and advise those working with it that they need to take a break. And, as I was working on the machine and it killed its screen at me, I realized that I had been acting in ways I had not, my attention lagging and my breathing going strange; I was a podling staring into the Crystal's rays, and it moved the mirror aside, if only for a moment. (I seem full of strange references today.)
I would like to think that I am not thus inclined, that "I have my head on straight" and look at what is rather than that for which there is not proof. Or I tell myself such, at least. How true it is, I do not know, though I would guess it's less than it ought to be.