This morning, while checking in at the airline counter for yet another mad adventure into the hinterlands of Alaska, I noticed that the young woman helping us was having trouble getting the boarding passes and luggage tags to print. She struck the device sharply several times with her open hand, and, much chastened, it began obediently spewing paperwork. This small event set me to thinking. It also reminded me of the following cartoon, which first appeared when the personal computer was starting to take hold around the country and no doubt the world. It made me laugh then, and it still does:

But I wonder if there is a reason deeper than simple frustration that we hit things to make them work. It’s a common enough phenomenon with automobiles, which makes me wonder if it could be a holdover from behaviors like smacking that old mule to get the plow moving. I have spent a lot of time considering how the human brain, that amazing blob of cytoplasm, has such a blind spot when it comes to phasing out responses that have outlived their usefulness, evolutionarily speaking. This tendency could also explain why we give our vehicles (and our computers) names, and attribute human (or at least, living creature) attitudes and motives to them.

Or, maybe the reason I continue to beat on inanimate objects is that I am (intermittently) reinforced by the occasional concurrence of blow and restored mechanical function. And if I can’t prove causation, correlation will suit me just fine.