I just listened to a talk given by Mike Kuniavsky at the O'Reilly Media Emerging Technology Conference last March. He was pitching the idea of using magic as a metaphor and a framework for designing "ubiquitous computing" gadgets. His claim, not unique to him, is that the metaphor of the desktop is not useful when you're using something with computing power that isn't, you know, a desktop computer.
Mike's thesis is that people tend to attribute magical or at least animistic properties to their gadgets, especially as the complexity and capability of the gadgets increases. I never really thought about this idea of anthropomorphizing gadgets before, except to be impatient with people who do so. (I do confess to moments of kinship with my car after long trips without mishap.) Mike's talk changed my mind about this -- rather than dismissing what is evidently a common human behavior, it makes sense to accept it and to think about how to put it to use.
You can hear the talk by grabbing the MP3 file from ITConversations.com. It's about forty minutes long. There's a PDF file containing the slides for the talk on the same page. Ditto links to his blog and company web sites.
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