"When Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh computer in a California auditorium in 1984, the screen displayed a photo of him. At one level, it was merely a way of demonstrating the computer’s graphics capabilities. At another level, it revealed an important dimension of the human-computer dynamic: To see oneself in a creation is the ultimate expression of one’s creative spirit...
Early computer advertisements rarely showed the user. The experience of using a computer was portrayed as a disembodied one, the mind of the user fusing with the computer to accomplish tasks.
In Apple's 2002 “Window” ad, however, the active presence of a user suggests the integration of the self, the body, and the machine -- a rhetorical move signifying computer and user as an integrated unit. The metaphor suggests that computers are not to be viewed as outside threats, but as intimate and integrated extensions of our own human faculties.
In the ad, a man is looking at himself just as much as he is looking at the impish machine. This recalls the Greek Narcissus myth where the young man is transfixed by his own reflection in the pool of water but does not recognize the reflection as himself.
The attraction of technology stems in part from our admiration of ourselves; personal technology points us back to ourselves. The man sees the computer as a separate entity, and yet the computer responds to his every move as if he were looking in a mirror. The computer symbolizes an extension of human thought, communication, and memory.
The Narcissus myth is thus revived in the guise of the gawking consumer.
In the process of personification, the rhetoric of the Apple ad recalls the narcissism at the heart of the human-computer exchange. The allure of the computer screen is linked to an ability to fill it with things that mirror the self. From emails to photos to work documents, the window of the computer screen presents the user with extensions of his or her own creativity, productivity, sociability, and memory.
I Think, Therefore iApple Buy
The marrying of human and machine consciousness in the "Windows" ad -- where man comes to realize his admiration for the machine is due in part to how well it mirrors himself -- was first suggested by the 1999 print ad “I think, therefore iMac.” The slogan is a satire of Enlightenment philosopher René Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am.”
By substituting “iMac” for “I am,” the 1999 ad sets up a similitude between computing and thinking, reflecting the way we process information. For example, the extent to which we prefer one interface over another reveals a cognitive predisposition. So an insult hurled at PC users is not just about the type of computer they use, but an attack on their structure of thinking -- because computer choice is a reflection of one’s personality and way of looking at the world.
#### Brett Robinson
##### About
Brett T. Robinson is a Visiting Professor of Marketing in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. He has worked in several industries including consumer packaged goods, professional sports, and manufacturing. Robinson earned his doctorate from the University of Georgia, where he also helped establish the New Media Institute. His book *[Appletopia](https://www.baylorpress.com/Book/382/Appletopia.html): Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs* comes out next week.
The ability for a product like the iMac to possess personality traits or to reflect a particular way of thinking and processing information grants it a human likeness.
Apple anthropomorphizing the machine reaches an apotheosis in the 2006 Apple “Get a Mac” campaign, where the computers are no longer even present but are instead portrayed by human actors: Justin Long begins each ad by saying, “Hello, I’m a Mac,” and John Hodgman replies, “And I’m a PC.”
In a 2007 ad, PC appears dressed in a surgical gown, so Mac asks if PC is going in for a checkup. PC explains that he is going in to upgrade his operating system, “which is great, but I get a little nervous when they mess around with my insides.” PC laments that they have to update his graphics card, memory, and processors: “it’s major surgery.”
Visibly nervous, PC ends the commercial by saying, “Listen, Mac, if I don’t come back, I want you to have my peripherals.”
These ads rely on a metaphor that equates the human actors with the hardware and software of their respective computer systems. This biological analogy between computer parts and the human body reminds us that the metaphors that guide computer development come from our own human faculties, particularly cognition and memory.
But the reverse is also true. Our sense of self is now shaped by the technologies that are used to diagnose and repair the body. It's easy to assume that the two actors in the “Get a Mac” campaign represent PC and Mac users, but the intent is clearly to grant the operating systems a human personality.
In the Mac narrative, differences in operating systems represent differences in cognition styles. Associating with a particular brand, then, is more than an affiliation to a name or corporate philosophy; it's an affiliation to a way of thinking. *The operating system is a metaphor for the mind. *
**The Apple ads, therefore, not only speak to the way in which technology has been personified (and extended as mirrors for the self), but also to the ways in which humans have been technologized. As Marshall McLuhan put it, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Adapted and excerpted from Appletopia by Brett T. Robinson. Copyright 2013 by Baylor University Press. Reprinted by arrangement with Baylor University Press. All rights reserved.
Wired Opinion Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90
