Willing Someone Your Computer
“A Macintosh PowerBook 160: she’d left it to me in her will, along with her books, but it had sat, plastic and inert, a thwarted life of the mind, her mind, a mind that I crammed into a box and stored in the back of the cupboard where I keep my fabric, yards of cambric and calico and gingham. So this spring I yanked it out of the cupboard and hauled it out of the box.” –“The Lingering of Loss”
The New Yorker had a piece where a friend willed the other her computer. It’s the modern-day equivalent of passing along your diary except maybe even more intimate because while diaries have stories and thoughts, computers often contain those too along with images and bookmarks and old correspondence. What someone saves says a lot about them.
The essay is a gorgeous statement on friendship and loss — I guess it’s not really a spoiler to say her best friend dies because I’ve already told you that there is a will — but I kept returning to this idea of who would want my computer. Josh will get it when I’m gone or the kids or the grandkids. I don’t know if anyone will want it; if anyone will power on the machine and poke through it. I mean, I would, if I was willed a computer, but I wonder if I’m the norm or the anomaly.
I’ve thought about my journals and my photos, my important papers from childhood and all the mementos I’ve collected over the years. But I never thought about my computers and how personal they are.
Would you give your computer to someone?
3 comments
Ha! I already share it with my daughter (sort of). She has a school Chromebook now, though, so I won’t get booted off for homework!
At any rate, I know she will go through all the old files, because that’s where the pictures and videos of her life are. She might open my Facebook (if that’s still around when I die) and my email to see what’s there. I should sort through that stuff someday.
Something I’ve never considered! I suppose being ever practical, I’d just want someone to get some use out of it. I suppose being somewhat circumspect, I’d want someone who really really knows me and loves me and is somewhat fully formed to get it. I’m thinking husband or sisters.
Hmm, that sounds amazing (and I have to read the essay in full). I don’t think I would will anyone my computer, though, because since having one die suddenly on me and finding out that my backup didn’t fully work, absolutely everything I do is on a google platform. So there’s really nothing “on” my computer, it would be more like willing my Google password which is the key to all my lists, and documents, and photos, and blog. Oh man, that’s scary and I should change that password right now! 🙂