Animism is an involved subject with some people I know. According to prophetkristy, Wedge Antilles is the True Animist Warrior God of Star Wars. (Site is down at the moment; it'll go up soonwise.)

But this is a separate discussion involving animism, not concerned with the archetypal gods. The section of animism under discussion here is the core, that gives the belief its name (animus, Latin for "soul"): The tenet that everything has a soul.

About a week ago, ccshadow and I were talking, and I mentioned that my iPod is named Luna. "What's yours named?" I asked.

"iPod," he said, looking at me as if I'd asked him "Why is Thursday?"

"You have no soul," I told him, but I later amended it to "Your iPod has no soul."

I've had this discussion a few times with different people, and my general conclusion is that people who name their computers invest a small soul into them, and therefore tend to have a pseudo-animist philosophy in their interactions with computers and technology.

(I'm talking about myself and my friends, people whose computer competency is above a certain level; while there are some people at the other end who think computers are alive, that's another type of alive and not my concern here.)

redheadedgeek has named her Powerbook--and RHG, have I told you recently how brilliant this name is?--"FayeRei," and her iPod is named "Gretchen"--the latter being one part Donnie Darko, one part Heinlein, and one part just liking the name, and the former being...well, if you can figure it all out, good for you; if not, I'm not going to spoil it for when you do. RHG has been known to talk about how FayeRei is either being nice or not so much; and Gretchen, of course, can be occasionally difficult.[1]

Wise, he of no livejournal, has named his computer "Superman," his external drive "Phoenix," his iPod "Spiderman," and his USB key "Flash."[2] Superman could be named Brainiac, since it's an information-gatherer, but Wise likes heroes, not villains; Phoenix is named because if anything happens to the computer, the external drive can recover it all.

In my own setup, Gaia is my central computer, and Luna is my iPod. My flash drives were "Challenger" and "Columbia" in memoriam, but Columbia is destroyed and I'm not really using Challenger much at the moment.

We all tend to talk about our computers and other technology in an almost alive sense. I'll ask RHG how FayeRei is almost as if I was inquiring about a mutual acquaintance, when I was wrangling with Gaia I debated renaming her after the reinstall, the old Nintendo that phlyers brought to the dorm needs to be dealt with in a certain way to get it to work, et cetera.

I believe that these souls in the technology are related to the users. Gretchen would be different for me than for RHG, because it's a piece of RHG's soul inside. No one else can use Superman quite the way Wise can; though this is ostensibly the result of Wise knowing all the tricks and everything he's put on the computer, I argue that that's part of the ensouling process. Certainly, my friends find it difficult to use Gaia, if for no other reason than I need to switch keyboard layouts.

Of course, this idea isn't entirely new. After all, Tracy Kidder called the book Soul Of A New Machine for a reason. But these are just my thoughts on modern techno-animism...we imbue the technology we use with fractions of our own soul.

[1] A side conclusion has been reached about gender in computers; Macs, as Douglas Coupland says in Microserfs, are usually female while PCs are male. Linux boxes, it varies.
[2] Wise's stuff is all Apple too; this is an abnormality in the male/female dichotomy.