My Computer

It is a magical light and sound show. The little blue lamp lights up when you push the button. From inside the grey case comes this low whirring sound, at times steady, as though a collection of ball bearings are rolling around inside, and at other times, intermittent, giving out hesitant clicks and rattles, while another light, this one yellow, flashes on and off.

Then a bright flash comes on the unlit monitor screen. It disappears, to be replaced by a set of numbers and letters, white on black, a list that reflects the arcane activities which are starting up in the guts of the grey case, and this list stays on the screen for a second or two.

Meanwhile, next to the grey case, a separate small flat plastic box about the size of a paperback book with colored lights along its spine, has been flashing. The flashes continue for some seconds and then the lights are steady, to announce with their steadiness that, yes, you are, or will be, connected to that magical world of the Internet.

The screen now displays, briefly, the famous logo of the company founded by the richest man ever to walk on this earth. Below it there is a bar with a series of moving squares intended to show that this machine is working, it's doing its thing, a bit more slowly than you might like, maybe, but it's doing it anyway, so be patient, my friend, and just wait.

The screen now turns blue, and a single word shows up in white. Welcome. You blink another time, and the screen changes once more. Now the screen shows a picture. It is a familiar picture, one that you yourself had made some time before, and through the magic of the stuff they call software, not necessarily made by the company of the richest guy in the world, you somehow managed to get it into the unfathomable innards of the computer, so that now this picture on the screen gives you a comfortable warm feeling of familiarity, of pride of ownership, and forms a pleasant background for the myriad of colorful "icons" situated all around the edges of the screen.

I forgot to mention, vis-à-vis the sound part of this light-and-sound show, that at about the time the "welcome" showed on the screen, a welcoming musical chime also came through the stereo speakers on either side.

So now everything seems to have settled down. The screen is bright and steadily lit. The screen icons and their little brethren in the "task bar" at the foot of the screen are waiting to be touched by the arrow of the "cursor" which moves mysteriously in concert with the "mouse" that your right hand operates, a mouse that also has buttons and wheels and a red light on its underbelly.

You do a couple of clicks with this mouse, and suddenly, there you are. The universe of the World Wide Web is wide open before you.

It's magic.