For serious animism, one of my favorite memories is still Faith healing for computers:
Operations called Systems Programming because a (mainframe) disk drive was misbehaving. Walked in to the machine room and over to it. Laid my hands on top of the box.
Problem solved. Never did anything else to it. But Ops said that the problem had gone away.
Laying on of hands. Don't see how it could work on inanimate objects, so ...
2025-10-18 04:19:45
I don't know about other professions, but I suspect everybody in IT spends some work time cursing when, inevitably, things don't go smoothly.
Whether they are talking to the software, or maybe the hardware. Or if they are appealing to a higher power for help. (Or maybe retribution on said recalcitrant software.). Hard to say. Possibly it varies from one individual to another.
For serious animism, one of my favorite memories is still Faith healing for computers:
Operations called Systems Programming because a (mainframe) disk drive was misbehaving. Walked in to the machine room and over to it. Laid my hands on top of the box.
Problem solved. Never did anything else to it. But Ops said that the problem had gone away.
Laying on of hands. Don't see how it could work on inanimate objects, so ...
I don't know about other professions, but I suspect everybody in IT spends some work time cursing when, inevitably, things don't go smoothly.
Whether they are talking to the software, or maybe the hardware. Or if they are appealing to a higher power for help. (Or maybe retribution on said recalcitrant software.). Hard to say. Possibly it varies from one individual to another.