The physicality of beige

This is the way it used to work: computers were housed in a rough, beige plastic casing. They got grubby. They were boxy, they were clunky, they were heavy. Clusters of dead skin would coagulate on the corners of the CPU, large grey/brown smears would radiate from the CD eject button and the letters of each key on the keyboard would be circled by a ring of finger dirt. As the hardware grew older, the retardants in the plastic grew darker and yellower. Years of use were recorded on them as well as in them. My life was being involuntarily being recorded on to it. Every so often, I would inspect the underside of my mouse and scrape several full fingernail’s worth of gunk away from the area around the roller ball. It was like it was slowly becoming a cyborg – part human, part machine; a synthesis of organic and synthetic parts. It was immensely satisfying. There were traces of me everywhere, my life on my computer was physical.

This is the way it works now: computers are housed in shiny black plastic or brushed metal casings with incredibly smooth surfaces. They are sleek and light-weight. They don’t get grubby. They reflect my image back rather than collect fragments from it. My reflected image can become distorted in the high gloss by a build up of greasy finger marks, but these can be wiped off with the end of a sleeve and they constantly are. And doing so is immensely satisfying. It’s smoothness is designed to repel. It’s shape has become ornament. My life now is voluntarily recorded within it and through it. My preoccupations and procrastinations are chronicled across the web, every trace of me exists deep within my hard drive or remotely in the cloud.