[frahse]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

What's interesting is that people would prefer to assume that I, their contemporary -- someone who grew up in the States and Canada -- could have no experience whatsoever with colloquialisms or how branding actually works.

Any reader who's acquainted with political and semiotic theory will know that I've been using ordinary language to make observations that are usually expressed in terminology-weighted academic idioms. The academics who write about this not only understand consumerism and colloquial speech; they make a point of studying them.

Of course I know what people mean by "I'm a Mac person" in the literal sense, and of course I know that, for most people, "[brand] person" = person's preference.

What I refuse to accept -- in my own life, not yours -- is the level of identification that happens when branding becomes personal, because to do so is to conflate individual expression with corporate manipulation. We are not our tools; our tools are the means to our own expression, not the expression of ourselves.

In other words, you can appreciate the design of a Mac or a stylish Chelsea boot -- you can revel in the aesthetics of external fashion -- without conflating them with individual qualities that only you possess.

The linguistic equation is this:

signifier > referent > signification.

Here's how it works:

the word cat (that which signifies an idea)
> the image of the actual cat (the idea to which the word refers)
> the resonant mind-object ("cat") that is created by the idea and the word.

In semiotics, which is partly linguistics and partly sociopolitical theory, the process becomes this:

signifier: any object that seems natural or desirable
> referent: the naturalization of artificial systems, such as corporations and governments
> signification: the illusion created in the minds of consumers that the artificial systems with which they interact are as natural and inevitable as the object with which they are now associated.

This is why, when people talk about politicians they love or detest, or products they hate or enjoy, they often speak in rebuses that even they never examine. In the worst scenario, this can reduce human beings to human megaphones for dead products. Personal insights are not prefabricated slogans.

Corporate branding wars are also a game of Three-Card Monty in which intense sociopolitical frustration, which can be dangerous to the people who run the artificial systems that create it, is misdirected into involvement in teams for various products and/or celebrities. Team PC/Team Mac is a subtler reimagining of the Roman coliseum.



I understand you, but I am still not a Mac or PC "person." I am simply a person who prefers different tools for different purposes.



Again, I appreciate your taking the trouble to explain the terminology, and I can understand why you did so, but I'm actually familiar with it.

Truthfully, I prefer the Mac UI to that of the PC in many respects, but not to the point of internalizing it as my own personal world. Think of gaming for a moment -- if you like survival horror, then you probably enjoy roaming through nightmarish worlds. But are those worlds created by you or do they express someone else's creativity? If the truth is the latter, then you are a person drifting through a grim amusement park, and the real expression of you consists of your thoughts, perceptions and observations within someone else's synthetic world.

Certain things can only be done on one platform or the other, and certain advantages are specific to either one.

That's why, if someone asks whether I'm a Mac or PC person, the most correct answer would seem to be this: "I'm a Mac or PC 'person' only in moments when my thought is confined unintentionally to the limitations of a particular platform. In my best moments, I can work within those limitations without ever allowing them to define me."



As I mentioned before (which could be why you're making the analogy), I've been a musician ever since I could walk. Because I grew up playing an Emerson baby grand with stiff action and a slightly dark tone, I've always preferred Baldwins to Steinways and Steinways to Yamahas. I also prefer certain kinds of hardware synths and VI in every category. But that changes over time as often as the instruments themselves. What changes apart from (but in relation to) these is my own style -- my syntax -- as a musician. As long as they're understood to be distinct, the musician can engage the instrument in a relationship that can prove so paradoxical it verges on syncretistic.

Oh how you do carry on!

Because I grew up playing an Emerson baby grand with stiff action and a slightly dark tone,

You might like the Asian keyboards then, which though certainly stiff seem bright. I too like the Steinways which as Horowitz said, can "sing."

Still one of the best tonal, and a fine action as well, pianos I ever played was actually a Wurlitzer that I found in a Baptist Hospital when my mother was there. I would visit til she drifted off or had a visitor and then go down to the large Chapel and play the Wurlitzer in the dark. It was magic. (My mom recovered too.)

Later when I had occasion to visit that hospital again, the big Chapel was gone as was the Wurlitzer. I would have bought that on the spot had I the opportunity. Only a smaller older and "tiny" Chapel was left with an old organ. I played it too but it wasn't magic, just a diversion.