Intimate — Summary

Ernesto PriegoContemplative

Computers used to be rooms where you could walk into. Now they are little boxes that get into you.

You used to go to them. Now they come with us. Something hasn’t changed: we still live in them.

My personal computer is an intimate machine. It goes to sleep with me.

If you could see into my hard drive you would find him I think I am.

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Priego traces how computers have shrunk, and how that has changed our relationship with them. They began as rooms we could walk into. Now they are small boxes that, as the poem puts it, "get into you." The speaker notices a reversal: we once went to the computer, and now it goes with us. Yet one thing stays the same, since we still live inside them, whether the machine is a room or a pocket-sized device.

The tone is quiet, thoughtful, and a little unsettled. Calling the computer "an intimate machine" that "goes to sleep with me" makes it feel close, almost like a partner, which is both comforting and strange. The last two lines turn inward. The odd phrase "him I think I am" suggests the speaker's identity is something he isn't fully sure of, and that a version of him might be stored in the hard drive. The mood is reflective, with an undercurrent of unease about how much of ourselves we hand over.

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