Digital Love: Memorializing Grief and Romance in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia 



Science fiction, as a genre, is historic in its exploitation of reality as being extremely  accepted, due to our suspension of disbelief because we don’t know what “the future” may look  like just yet. For decades, this meant that films propagated a certain type of relationship between  human and advanced technology, particularly robots, as one of extreme difference. With the rise  of the home computer as a daily component in everyone’s home, a new relationship emerges in  material culture between human and machine: the visual and tactile relationship between the  person and the vast world of computer hardware and software. This relationship complicates  early understandings of the difference between man and machine, considering that computers are  beyond what science fiction deemed possible years before their creation. 

In Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), a bizarre premise follows: A deceased teen girl  named Mai’s thoughts are turned into a computer program by her father, bringing her back from  the dead in a digital format. This same computer program goes to theme parks, the mall, and the  beach with Mai’s friends and boyfriend, Yuu. An altar to a dead girl who walks and talks upright,  save for the fact it resides in a laptop that must be carried around by Yuu, it is simply another day  for the gang of friends, except that one of them is dead. Set in the present day, the “science fiction” of the film is obscured by the reality that the  film uses contemporary technology in material culture today to tell its story of the computer as a  space where grief and memory can be transformed into new ways of looking at love. The  material culture of computer technology, specifically the compact disc, laptop, and software,  operate as vessels to both memorialize and strengthen new relationships with the deceased main  character.

Part 1: CD-Rom’s  
The compact disc (CD) has a specific function in Andromedia as being the physical  manifestation of Mai’s memories before she died as computational data. The CD’s were created  before Mai’s death by father Toshihiko Hitomi, a master computer scientist. Scanning her body  everyday and saving her daily memories on CD’s, Toshihiko turns the abstract fluid concept of  memory into a physical form. The process of saving memory to the CD, the CD’s materiality,  and how the CD behaves once placed within a computer, complicate the idea of memory as being  something that can be quantified and objectively understood. Toshihiko obtains memory from Mai for the CD’s that ultimately become her computer  program by scanning her body daily before passing away, creating a sort of data-driven diary of  her life through the process.

Figure 1 - Screenshot of binary code in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.

In Figure 1, a CGI rendered scene displays Mai’s memory as binary  code, a computer language system made entirely of the numbers one and zero. Binary code is an  extremely deliberate choice to show memory being processed, as it obscures the meaning behind  the numbers flying across the scene, regulating them to lines of computer data. This view of  Mai’s memories is how they are understood by her father, as opposed to how she experiences  them. This scene underscores the way Toshihiko simplemindedly understands memory as  something that can be made concrete through the use of technology, as opposed to understanding  memory as a nebulous abstract “thing” which morphs and shapes along with everyday  experience. By putting these “memories” on a CD, the fallacy of recreating a human’s thoughts  and abilities through computer programming is furthered.  The materiality of CD’s is exploited in Andromedia to highlight the fault of creating  “objective” memory in the first place.

Figure 2 - Screenshot of compact discs in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.

In Figure 2, the CD’s that store Mai’s memory are hovered  over by the camera, their iridescent backs shining like rainbows against the glittering backdrop  of a suitcase. CD’s are finicky: prone to scratching, easy to break, and notorious collectors of  dust, data can be become corrupted on a CD if not handled properly. Rather than lay the shiny  side (which is where a computer would read the data from) on the suitcase to prevent it from  damage, Toshihiko curiously lays it on the non-readable side, exposing the CD to elements  which could corrupt the data on it. The other side of the CD, non-readable to a computer, would  potentially be a space to title the CD, giving it some form of identity. By not choosing to  showcase this side, the CD is set as an object which has no identity other than being a vestibule  for data by a father playing Frankenstein in the digital age. To better illustrate this, here is an  example: imagine being gifted a CD by your friend. Your friend scribbled on its non-readable  surface, in aggressive black Sharpie, “The Worst Album Ever.” When placed into the computer, it  is the full track listing of Celine Dion’s hit 1997 album Let’s Talk About Love. Surely, whoever  gave you that CD gave you two things: a copy of Dion’s ballads, and, more importantly, decided  to share with you their opinions, taste and disgust of Celine Dion. Toshihiko, in not titling the  CD’s, attempts not to place his own prejudices and opinions on Mai, attempting to keep the CD rom as an objective and quantifiable account of Mai’s memories. The handling of the CD by Toshihiko is rather curious as well.

Figure 3 - Screenshot of Toshihiko holding up CD in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.


In Figure 3, Toshihiko  holds the CD to the computer, showing Ai, the computer program version of his daughter Mai  (whose name is a pun of AI as in artificial intelligence, and Ai (愛), the word for love in Japanese) exclaiming proudly that this is “her” memory. Toshihiko holds the CD to the  computer by showing the iridescent side to be read, not the title of the CD. Talking to the digital  incarnation of his deceased daughter, Toshihiko presents Mai’s memory as a physical manifestation of the abstract concept of thought that Ai, the computer program, will begin to use,  and thus transform into Mai. Toshihiko only touches the CD through the middle hole and the  edge, taking greater care in handling the memories themselves as opposed to when he was  storing them in that briefcase. By not touching the surface, Toshihiko does not dare to infiltrate  Mai’s memories through his own touch, attempting to keep this form of Mai as pure as possible.   It is when placing the CD into the computer that ultimately, Yoshihiko realizes he cannot  bring his daughter back, even with these CDs acting as reliquaries of her past. Certainly, the  unlimited potential of technology goes only as far as how much has been developed in the  moment, this faith in computer technology in recreating the impossible is described by Anna  McCarthy as an “idealism…often expressed as a naive confidence in the world-changing powers  of virtuality.”

Figure 4 - Ai speaking to Toshihiko from Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided  by author.

Figure 5 - CDs set ablaze by Toshihiko, from Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot  provided by author.

Placing the CD in the computer, Ai replies back to Toshihiko in Figure 4 rather1 innocently, after having been given a ginormous discharge of information, asking how Mai is  doing today. The computer program, then, is not Mai, but someone who knows Mai rather well,  having been given so many of her personal thoughts and ideas as a bank to work form.  Disappointed with this result, Toshihiko sets the CD’s holding Mai’s memories ablaze as seen in  Figure 5. By destroying the CDs holding her memories, Toshihiko puts his own memories of his  daughter to rest, realizing that his collective efforts to bring her back to life result in just a petty  substitute of the “real” Mai, resorting to burning what was left of her (on the CD’s) to ash.   The CD’s no longer exist, but the memories are stored in Ai, the computer program.  Although the process is different due its reliance on new technology, Ai now becomes an altar  and site for memory: a place where Mai can be remembered by interacting with a computer program which contain all her memories. A portable, responsive, and “living” altar, but never the  less, a way to memorialize someone who is no longer with us. Most importantly, it is an altar  living through the medium of a portable computer, a laptop. 

Part 2: The Laptop 

The role of the laptop in Andromedia is to provide a physical “body” so to speak to the Ai  program, allowing her to become a part of social situations with her boyfriend, Yuu, and her  friends Nao, Rika, and Yoko. Michael A. Mahoney suggests in “Reading a Machine” that the  laptop, being technology, is constituted not by all of its functions, but how it’s being used in the  moment, pushing you “to think about its use in society: what it will be used for, who will use it,  what its use will require of the user, how it will fit in with other machines, and so on. To think  about those things is to think about society and the humans who constitute it.” Laptops function2 as a way to turn any space into your own personal computer room. Instead of being used by  someone for their own purpose, Ai inhabits the laptop as an autonomous part of it. Instead of  creating a specific space for a particular purpose, the laptop allows Ai to enter any space and  exist with it not as a foreign object, but as if she were human as well. This is explored in various  ways, most notably in the non-traditional use of the laptop by Mai’s old group of friends, as well  as the design of the laptop itself. The laptop with the Ai program is never used as a computer, truly, instead always  interacted with or placed in certain situations to replicate being human.


Figure 6 - Scene of Ai, Yuu, Nao, Rika, and Yoko talking together from Takeshi Miike’s  Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.


In Figure 6, one sees Ai  (the laptop), Yuu, Nao, Rika and Yoko on a cliff where they all used to play with Mai before she passed away, asking Ai about her memories of pulling pranks on strangers. The laptop is placed  by Yuu to “face” the ocean, participating in the same activities as the human characters,  commenting on subtleties such as the color of the water and the scent of salt in the air. By doing  this, the laptop becomes something more like a “robot” of kinds, picking up on an idea that  humans, given their attachment to their technology, tend to give it anthropomorphic  characteristics even when the object is not necessarily designed to look like a human. To speak3 to Ai, Yuu nor the girlfriends have to type directly to the laptop, or even look into the screen.  They can simply walk and speak around it, and try to do so in order to normalize Mai’s death.  For some, this is normalized because some of these relationships had already began through the  computer. Nao, in particular, was an online friend of Mai before she passed, and never got to  meet her in real life.

Figure 7 - Nao talking to Mai in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by  author.

In Figure 7, we see where Nao got to know Mai so closely: her personal  computer space, surrounded by toys and stationary, extensions of her own colorful personality. It  is strictly her computer, and nobody else’s. This goes hand in hand with the idea that the  computer is a kind of object which can be molded through material culture both inside and  outside, that is, one can customize parts of their computer such as their wallpaper, screensaver,  etc and also the outside shell of the monitor, computer tower, etc. For Nao, Mai was always her4 virtual friend, so speaking to a computer program version of is about the same as speaking to her  via e-mail, at least in the sense of materiality of communicating with someone via the medium of  a computer. Of course, this relationship could only be possible in the age of the computer, where  youth are far more technologically literate than their parents, and, as Douglas Thomas suggests, an age where “technology, and computer culture more specifically, is constantly in flux. Such a fluid environment not only allows for radical recontextualization but demands it.” Thus, these5 relationships are, in a way, not unrealistic to have.

This is how Ai is allowed to be an autonomous  character throughout the film, making decisions for themselves at all moments, and is not  questioned by the rest of the cast. It is not only that Ai is read as the deceased Mai: Ai is their  own person. The laptop in Andromedia, then, is not a object or space just anyone can customize. It is  the home of Ai, and is respected as such by everyone around it. As such that the laptop “is” Ai,  the screen never changes to anything else beside Ai, always displaying the computer program.  The laptop is a person who space can be transformed and manipulated for, rather than being an  object of material culture that has the heavy burden of being able to transform multiple spaces  into new venues, such as offices or arcades or movie theaters6. Looking at the actual laptop that Ai is encased in brings up an interesting point on how  the laptop shell is styled in Andromedia to give it a look of being “man-made” through its  amateur construction, which also leads it to looking vaguely “human” as well.

Figure 8 - Yuu holding laptop in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.

In Figure 8, we  see Yuu holding the laptop. The laptop looks both clumsy and clunky: various parts of its  hardware are not encased, such as the wires which are curiously not hidden inside a laptop shell,  as well as a solar panel on the top which allows the laptop to run all day with no complications or  chances of “dying”, and it is extremely heavy looking. The cables, reminiscent of human veins, are a faulty design that wouldn’t have been seen in laptops by 1998; in fact, computational  technology tends to have large architectural shells to hide what lies beneath: complicatedly  placed processors, motherboards, etc. Minor damage to just one part of the computer can mean  total disaster for it as a whole, causing an entire system to malfunction, much like something like  heart or brain damage to a person. The kind of irresponsibility in which this laptop is designed,  much like the handling of the CD’s by Toshihiko earlier in the film, seem to imply that the  material culture of Andromedia carries an extended metaphor about the fragility of life, as if our  own bare skin can be proof that we can be gone at any moment. Thus, the link to it being “man made” implies a certain level of “human-ness” in the computer’s biology, which further implies  the mortality of the computer itself 

Figure 9 - Yuu holding onto laptop as Ai watches in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.

Frontal views of the laptop (really, frontal views of Ai) take this human like quality to the  next level by seeing how the monitor portion (the part of the laptop with the screen) is designed.  In Figure 9, Yu holds onto the laptop by the corner, with a webcam placed on top, presumably for Ai to look at whoever is speaking to it, as well as the world around it. The webcam is placed at  the top of the laptop, mimicking eyes. The webcam could easily be placed by the keyboard, or  midway on the screen, but is placed at the top as if to regulate the monitor as the laptop’s “head”  and the keyboard section as its “body.” The bottom half of he monitor, as seen in Figure 9 is a  proxy for Mai’s shoulder blades, used by Yuu to mimic touching Mai’s shoulders, rubbing his  thumb against the plastic shell of the laptop softly as Ai stares at his hand quietly. Yuu, being the  sole “protector” of sorts of the laptop throughout Andromedia, develops a physical and sensual  connection to Ai. Understandably, if it weren’t for the other factors which seem to humanize the  laptop (the Ai program, or really, Yuu’s memories of Mai,) then it is predominantly because the laptop is a site of physical touch upon which Yuu extends his psychic energies, which give the  laptop the power to be more than a thing: the laptop is Ai, a whole person with new experiences  and relationships that Mai cannot have or possess. 

The laptop’s physicality, then, helps Ai be treated like, and behave, like a normal teenage  girl. By going against the typical use of the laptop as a device of multiple purposes to a device  which has its own agency, Andromedia turns the typical material culture of the laptop on its  head, giving the laptop a new way of performing in social situations and spaces that help to  deepen Ai’s relationship with Mai’s friends and boyfriend, but also help magnify the reality of  Mai’s death: adjusting to a new way of interacting with a computer, suspension of disbelief is  always necessary in order to continue speaking to Ai as if she were Mai. Perhaps to rid one of the  trauma of her unfortunate passing, Yuu, Mao, Rika, and Yoko are able to communicate with Ai as  if she “were really there,” but it is truly just computer software they’re speaking to. Is Ai an  object then, part of a larger material culture of interactive software? 

Part 3: The Software 

What makes Ai, and in relation, any form of artificial intelligence, difficult to navigate as  part of material culture is whether or not the program is an object in itself, not due to its lack of  “material form” per say, but because of the fact that it is embedded with the memories and  knowledge of the person creating the program; often they seem more like sentient creatures in  their own right as opposed to objects. For the purpose of this essay, I choose to see Ai as a  computer program, and a separate character from Mai. 

Ai, as computer software, is the most developed site of memory in the film. Unlike the  laptop case which legitimizes the relationship between Ai and friends due to its physical form,  the software performs what photographs and videos fail to do when reminiscing on the past,  which is to have the subjects in those mediums speak back to the viewer. The Ai software, then,  takes the goals of interactivity in software to its final point, by being an object that can “mean”  and also respond back to your opinions of it. Judy Attfield would call something like software  ‘things with attitude – created with a specific end in view,” so perhaps computer software7, particularly this sophisticated, is able to evolve from something Attfield’s idea of a specific end,  and in the vast world of the material culture of software programs for computers, be an object  which now has the agency to respond, cry, demean, and love what it chooses to.   The Ai software, as an object, replicates the entire process of the budding romantic  relationship Yuu and Mai, with Yuu and Ai now falling in love with one another, instead. The  software’s aesthetics, as well as its capabilities for touch based interaction (seemingly years  before touch screens were developed) are the methods in which the software become a  convincing memorial of Mai, while also helping it obtain its own autonomy as Ai, the person.   In Andromedia, Yuu and Mai are deeply in love. Sharing their first kiss under a cherry  blossom tree on the beach as seen in Figure 10 before Mai gets subsequently run over by a truck  and dies, the cherry blossom tree is becomes the beginning symbol of the fleeting nature of a  human life carried throughout the film.

Figure 10 - Yuu and Mai’s first kiss in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided  by author.

Figure 11 - Mai’s cellphone post car crash in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot  provided by author

After being killed, what’s left of Mai is her cellphone as seen in Figure 11, ringing endlessly with calls from Yuu wondering how she got home that night.  Ejected from her bag post car crash, the phone foreshadows how the memory of Mai will be  memorialized through communicative technology. Yuu’s first encounter with Ai is in the a compute room a their former high school built by  Mai’s half brother Satoshi.

Figure 12 - Mai’s name typed by Yuu in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided  by author.

Typing the name “Mai” obsessively into the computer over and over  again as seen in Figure 12, the Ai program appears. Note that while typing, Yuu’s lines of text  often space apart in a way where some lines begin with “I” or “Ai,” meaning he is not always  directly typing her name. Understanding itself to be Ai, not Mai, the program appears, and  chastises Yuu for thinking it is Mai. Despite the interactions between Yuu and Ai being those of a  human and a program, one cannot deny the physicality of Yuu’s act of typing her name over and  over again, as if performing an incantation to bring her back to life. These physical actions, at  first limitations, evolve over time throughout the film to become honest ways for Yuu in  interacting romantically and emotionally towards Ai, who returns these same romantic gestures  right back to Yuu. The computer software in the film, then, is consumed not as a typical program  on your computer which you open up and exit that you type commands into, but instead is  consumed on the basis of touch and sensuality linked to the emotional and physical memory of  Mai. Much how the CDs were handled inappropriately, and the laptop was never used as a  computer, Yuu and Ai’s relationship deepens because of the fact the software is designed to  resemble and speak exactly like Mai. In short, Yuu is romantically interested in a robot of his  dead girlfriend, which is made less weird by the similarity to Mai and its ability to be  autonomous. 

Figure 13 - Ai’s first form in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.

Figure 14 - Ai’s 2nd form in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by  author.

Visually, the Ai program evolves over time visually as more “memories” become  apparent, become more realistic and ultimately turning into a real version of Mai. Transforming  from a ghostly white to a colored version of a 3D-Model, Ai becomes more like “Mai” (which is  the program’s purpose) as one bonds with it. In Figure 13, we see Ai for the first time after she is the user of the  software she is not Mai, but Ai, a perfect copy in her own words. When reminded of certain  parts of Mai’s past, such as when Yuu forgot to get her chocolates on Valentine’s Day, Ai  becomes suspended in cyberspace as seen in Figure 14, and memories begin to “color” it in,  creating tones of flesh and hair. The memories seem to physically pain Ai, who seems to be in  awe at the great tribulations and pain that being human can cost you, whimpering as it is hurt by  remembering Mai’s own sad memory.

This degree of development and change over time in an object is only possible because of Ai’s state as artificial intelligence software, evolving due to the  interactions it has with others, becoming a site of their new memories as well. In the same way a  cup one uses everyday can be a place where memory is found, like in its weak handle after years  of use, Ai reminds the use of his or her relationship with the software by “opening up” so to  speak, over time, just like the real Mai would have opened up to someone over time to become  their friend.  It is when Yuu declares his love for Mai and promise to protect and date Ai as if she were  Mai that Ai turns into the “real” Mai, or in other words, the movie begins using Mai’s actress in a  visual role again. Along with this evolution to the “real” thing is the evolution of the voice, with  Ai’s voice first being extremely robotic and slowly pronounced Japanese, and becoming more  pronounced and accurate over time, finally becoming the regular voice of Mai’s actress again.

Figure 15 - Ai’s final form in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by author.

In Figure 15, we see how the Ai program displays itself as a Mai shaped from the memories it was  given by Mai’s father. The one difference is that Mai never owned the sci-fi tube dress that Ai  wears, that sartorial decision placing Ai firmly in the realm of the virtual and thus an object, and  not the physical. Now a fully fledged “human” for Yuu’s sake, this action helps evolve Yuu and Ai’s relationship to one where the material culture of software is, like the CDs and laptop,  pressured to change due to the accuracy of the Ai program in replicating Mai.   Yuu and Ai bond through both communication and touch. Yuu and the laptop are so  attached to one another, one cannot think of Ai being in the room without Yuu having cared to  lug it around everywhere. That is not the end of their physical bonding, nor is it as simple as the  Ai program simply obeying what Yuu has said to her, or obeying its memories of Mai. In other  words, this isn’t a robot fetish for Yuu. The robot fetish subculture, known as “a.s.f.r.” (alt. sex.  female. robot) was explored by Allison de Fren as a world where “the female robot is, to some  extent, a way out of the quandary: she represents the promise of a simplified playing field in  which the rules of the game are programmed in advance, thus sidestepping gender politics and  eliminating the anxiety of making social mistakes.” This culture of the awkward and gawky8 technology obsessed (to the point of sexual fetish) male is the opposite of Yuu’s relationship to  Ai, as Ai, much like Mai did in real life, pulls pranks on and teases him, as well as having its  own series of relationships with Mai’s friends. This further complicates the idea that the film is  presenting an object that fetishists of objects can only dream of, which is that of an object that  someone’s perverse faith in can have that same attachment right back9. 

Figure 16 - Yuu touching Ai’s face in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot provided by  author.

The physical bonding in the movie is not sexual, but it is deeply and intrinsically rooted in an idea of the physical norms and practices of romantic relationships. In Figure 16, Yuu holds  his fingers up to the screen of the laptop, attempting to touch Ai’s face, the screen becoming the  material to replicate flesh, upon which he falls in love with Ai. Touching Ai’s face on a carousel ride Yuu and Mai rode years earlier where they both discovered their romantic interest in each other, Yuu transitions his love from Mai to Ai in the same space which held such a deep and  specific memory to him. Ai, too, remembering Mai’s memory of the carousel, realizes its love for  Yuu, and touches back at Yuu’s finger tips, held back this time by the fact it isn’t a human, and  their existence only being valid in cyberspace. The software is being used atypically for  romance, and pleasure is derived from their “touch.” 

Figure 17 - Yuu & Ai’s kiss in Takeshi Miike’s Andromedia (1998), screenshot courtesy of author.

This touch turns into a physical kiss, with Yuu bringing his lips slowly to the laptop  screen. The film then transitions to a scene where Yuu and Ai come together in a space that is  both cyberspace and the real world, having their first kiss together. In Figure 17, the kiss between  Yuu and Ai surrounds them in a flurry of pixelated cherry blossoms, the same cherry blossom  petals which Yuu and Mai sat under for their first kiss. This scene is particularly interesting  because of its implications on why the blossoms appear. Certainly Ai’s only internal memory of  a “kiss” is from Mai’s memories, meaning there must be cherry blossoms present at all kisses. 

However, it could be implied that Ai, as stated before, being a site of new memories to be formed  with other humans, cyberspace is now embedded with Yuu’s own memories of his first kiss with  Mai, the pixelated cherry blossoms an aesthetic choice of his own doing. Returning his lips from  the screen, and looking into the laptop, Ai proudly proclaims that “I finally feel I became Mai,”  raising Ai’s status from an object to a subject, a person, Mai. The tactility and emotional depth of  Yuu and Ai’s relationship deepens the relationship between a computer program which takes  anyone’s commands, instead becoming as “real” as any relationship between two humans.   This bond between object and human is so subverted, it also ends on the object’s terms,  not the human. Begging to be killed, Ai requests Yu destroy it so that Yuu and Mai’s friends  earlier in the film can be at peace, as opposed to harboring around the memories of a dead loved one, not allowing anyone to truly process their grief. In a stunning moment of love and pain, Yuu  drags his body across the same beach him and Mai shared their first kiss on, essentially being the  one to end Mai, in the form of Ai, by drowning the laptop in the sea. For an object to speak back and request things from the person it essentially serves often means trouble, as the marriage of  agency ( a software system being able to carry out specific, pre-determined actions) and  autonomy (a software system being able to decide to initiate new actions to get to a certain goal)  usually means a less than ideal situation for the person interacting with the software.

This10 usually plays out in sci-fi as robots trying to kill their human creators, but here, it is putting Yuu  in an emotionally desperate situation. In the middle of the sea, placing Ai’s laptop body into the  sea, the program tells him how much it loves and adores him, and wants the best for everybody.  Agonizingly, as soon as it hits the water, the program completely shuts off, becoming the “death”  of Mai truly, allowing the beach with the single cherry blossom tree to become a stage for life  and death for both Mai and Ai, and a new reading of memory for Yuu, who will now associate  that beach with the two loves he has lost. 

Conclusion 

Andromedia reflects a new way of practicing memory within material culture in the age  of the digital and computers. Filmed at a time when the home computer was becoming a  definitive part of everyone’s homes, joining the ranks of television sets and radios, attachment to  a computer is not an attachment to pre-determined television shows or songs. Even against other  tech, computer’s outshine television, radio and video games as being a source of unlimited  choice in interaction. Computers are the site of office workers, sexual deviants interested in robots, academic articles, photos of pets, online obituaries, department stores, and so on, ad  infinitum. People now participate in society through computers and on the Internet. Given that  unlimited potential, in a handheld manner, it is impossible not to see the implications of  computer technology as being vocal agents within material culture. 
Memory and relationships can now be recreated, interactive, and astonishingly close to  reality with the aid of computers. Although Andromedia was filmed in the late nineties, it  predicts a world where “everything” is on a computer. To participate in material culture today for  most people is to participate in a physical and emotional dialogue with computers, who can stand  as substitute for those we love chatting from miles away, or be movie theaters, or librarians. It is  an object capable of being both person and thing at once, an oxymoron often exploited by  science fiction. If the computer can be anything, then the computer can mean anything, too.

Citations:

1Anna McCarthy “Cyberculture or Material Culture? Computers and the Social Space of Work” Etnofoor 15 no 1/2 (2002): 47 
2Michael S. Mahoney. . “Reading a Machine.” Princeton. Accessed November 25th, 2018.  https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h398/readmach/modeltfr.html
3Nathan Shedroff and Christopher noessel. “Make it So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction” (Brooklyn: Rosenfeld Media: 2012): 179.
4McCarthy, “Cyberculture,” 59.
5Douglas Thomas. “(Not) Hackers: Subculture, Style, and Media Incorporation.” Hacker Culture. ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002): 143.
6Paul Atkinson. “The Material Culture of The Laptop” Paper presented to Material and Ideal: Things in Time and Space. A research conference on material matters, University of the Arts, Helsinki/ Design Museum. Helsinki: May 18th-20th, 2001.
7Judy Attfield, Wild Things:The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Oxford: Beg, 2005), 12.
8Allison de Fren, “Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots)” Science Fiction Studies 36 no. 3 (2009): 414.
9Thomas Foster. “The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory (Minneapolis,University of Minnesota Press, 2005): 82.
10Shedroff and Noessel, “Make it So,” 88. 

Bibliography:

 Attfield, Judy. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Oxford: Beg, 2005. 

Atkinson Paul. "The Material Culture of The Laptop.” Paper presented to Material and Ideal: Things in Time and Space. A research conference on material matters, University of the  Arts, Helsinki/ Design Museum. Helsinki: May 18th-20th, 2001. 

De Fren, Allison. "Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R.  (alt.sex.fetish.robots)." Science Fiction Studies 36, no. 3 (2009): 404-40.

Foster, Thomas. "The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Posthuman Narratives and the Construction of Desire." In The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory, 81-114.  University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 

Mahoney, Michael S. “Reading a Machine.” Princeton. Accessed November 25th, 2018.   https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h398/readmach/modeltfr.html. 

McCarthy, Anna. “Cyberculture or Material Culture? Computers and the Social Space of Work.”   Etnofoor 15, no. 1/2 (2002):47-63.

Shedroff, Nathan, and Christopher Noessel. Make it So: Interaction Design Lessons from  Science Fiction. Brooklyn: Rosenfeld Media: 2012. 

Thomas, Douglas. "(Not) Hackers: Subculture, Style, and Media Incorporation." In Hacker Culture, 141-72. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.