Looking at the ever shifting line that defines what is necessity and what is luxury, my relationship with my laptop has moved from luxury and a self-convinced justification that it was a necessity to actually being a necessity.
There is an interesting comparison between the technological interior and the branded and glowing exterior. The idea that the lava lamp actually embodied popular culture in the past is quite similar to the idea that the MacBook (especially the pure white MacBook) embodied popular culture. In an article, the author asked the question, “Where does the lava lamp stand along the continuum between technocracy and counterculture?”
At the time that I purchased my laptop, however, I didn’t want it because it was popular or because it was somehow countercultural. I wanted it for its power. I wanted to be able to create amazing things with it. However, at the time, it was not a purchase made out of simple necessity because I didn’t yet know how to use its processing power. It was an aspirational purchase. It’s clean white surface was indicative of a new beginning – college and independence.
I had it in a frosted white laptop shell. I stuck a film over the mouse and keyboard area that had a blue sky pattern on it. I did careful research before to ensure that the film would be fully removable in the event that I changed my mind. I even had a silicon keyboard cover.
Maybe it’s when I removed all of those extra things that I actually started using my laptop. Cutting away all the extra just left me with the machine and it’s guts.
Now, nothing about the exterior is clean. The plate around the keyboard is chipped from closing the screen too forcefully. I’ve picked the plastic around the screen. I’ve removed the protective film that I had placed over the mouse and keyboard area. I’ve spilled bits of chocolate around the keys, just remnants of my late night munching while working and creating with my laptop.
The luxurious exterior has disappeared. But the necessary interior has come to life.
There has been a shift with how I treat my laptop too. Initially, I only carried it around in a case in a bag. Now, I literally will carry the naked laptop around with the cord resting on top. Sometimes, I even lean the laptop vertically against a wall with its base touching the floor. Bobby pins from the bottom of my bag now live inside the cd-rom drive.
Just as the level of luxury has decreased over time, so too has my level of proudness decreased over time. When I first purchased my laptop, I was proud that I had managed to buy it. I was proud that I wasn’t just another kid who got a mac for graduation. I was proud because not only was the piece of equipment pristine, it was also something that I had paid for myself. I made sure that if anyone ever commented on it, that I let them know it wasn’t just a gift or something like that.
Now, there is no need to shout disclaimers about the cost of the purchase. No one cares if it was my parents or me who bought the scuffed up laptop. If anything, I make disclaimers about how although I have this “crappy laptop” I have an iMac at home. A little over a year ago, I bought an iMac because I ‘needed’ a bigger screen to design better with.
As I begin a life in the technology world, everyone has the fastest, newest piece of equipment. Because I’m mobile a lot, I can only bring my laptop, so it’s the only thing that others in the technology world see. They see my crappy laptop, which I now make excuses for. Just as the pristine exterior has degraded, I am beginning to have the feeling that the powerful interior will soon degrade as well. This is fine, I have all of the files that I need on my iMac, but having thought about it a bit, and now especially in light of the death of Steve Jobs, I most definitely want to keep my laptop even if it has no real utility.
I think of that single dollar that small businesses sometimes keep and frame as the first dollar they ever made. I will keep my laptop in that same light… The first iterations of my projects were built on the laptop, and I’m sure when my laptop dies or I get a new one, it will take on a more transient meaning. But I will probably look proudly and fondly on the dead piece of equipment and feel good that I actually was able to create so much with something so outdated as a white MacBook from 2008.