Today I got a new computer. Dann traded some extra computer stuff for a complete (though old) machine from a friend of his. He gave it to me so I could set up a different operating system – like Linux or Windows NT – and mess around with it without screwing up my “real” system. Dann is nice like that. At least to me. :-) Apart from that, today has been very boring. Nothing cool happened. You know what that means? It’s time to play “Describe what’s in front of me!”

Just below my monitor, next to the M&Ms, I have a bar of Toblerone chocolate from Switzerland. Pan gave me and Matt each a bar a couple of days ago. It’s very good chocolate (although I don’t consider myself a connoisseur); it has honey and almond nougat in it.

Which brings us to the question: What, exactly, is “nougat?” It is, of course, a creamy, syrupy filling for chocolate candies; I’ve known that since I was little. But what is it made of? The ingredients listing on the chocolate bar tells what’s in the bar as a whole, but doesn’t list “nougat” or which particular ingredients make it up.

Of course, if I was really interested, I’d just look it up online, but I don’t really care. What I do care about is the number of things we accept as “explained” when we’ve really just been given a name. “What’s this stuff in the chocolate bar?” “Nougat.” And everything is in its place, because the sweet creamy stuff has a name.

There are a lot of directions I could take this entry from this point: a commentary on the power of names and naming, epistemological speculation on names as signifiers and signified, toss in a reference to Burber’s “I-thou” relationships, maybe conclude by drawing a theological analogy and hey presto! Instant blog entry. But I want to take this in a different direction.

When I wrote “I’d just look it up online, but I don’t really care,” just now, it wasn’t exactly the truth. I did look it up online, and discovered that the information was prosaic enough that I couldn’t really write much about it. But I did care, and I always have cared, not just enough to ask the questions, but enough to poke around for the answers. Most any electronic toy I got as I kid finally wound up in pieces (much like Sid’s toys in the Toy Story movie). It wasn’t enough for me to know “press the button and the electric truck moves forward,” I had to know what the switches and gears looked like, how they connected, and what “really happened” when I pressed that button. Needless to say, one of my favorite toys was (and is) Legos.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying my job so much. I’m not content to know a computer as just a “magic box” that lets me surf the web or play video games – I want to know how everything connects up inside.