Screen Savers May Offer Clues To Personality

SANTA ANA, Calif. - It is night in the city. Skyscraper lights twinkle. All is calm.

This is the scene Carolyn Seiler sees if she ignores her computer a little too long.

It's a screen-saver program, one Seiler picked to be a soothing antidote to a stressful job at an Irvine, Calif., water-conservation company.

Sharon Abar likes screen savers with a little more fire.

"The one I'm running right now is a dragon who stomps around my desktop and burns holes in it," the Long Beach woman said.

Different people, different screen savers. Same point: With so many to choose from, there's bound to be a screen saver for you.

In fact, the kind of screen saver dancing across your monitor right now says a lot about you, according to experts who study how individuals interact with their environments.

Into smoking dragons or flying toasters? You're whimsical. Prefer Mickey Mouse or "101 Dalmatians"? You find familiar things comforting. Opt for abstract shapes that meld and merge? You're a left-brain worker relaxing with a little right-brain fun. Couldn't be bothered? You're serious about your computer - and your life.

Screen savers started out with a serious purpose: They prevented an image from literally burning into the Phosphor coating inside a black-and-white computer screen if the machine was left on too long. Old-fashioned screen savers either erased the screen or drew simple lines.

But burn-in isn't a big danger with today's color monitors. So screen savers have become an excuse to have fun.

That fun has sold millions of programs and created a market that analysts measure at $60 million to $120 million in annual sales.

"Screen savers are the lava lamps of the '90s," said Brian Stonehill, a visual-literacy expert. Both give people something restful to look at that's always changing, he said.

"People in offices have a lot of unsupervised time, and screen savers are a way of redeeming blandly wasted office time with colorfully wasted office time," he said.

Stonehill, director of media studies at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., divides screen savers into four groups: humorous, beautiful, erotic and personal.

Funny images such as the flying toasters in Berkeley Systems' After Dark series or Delrina's Opus 'n Bill cartoon screen savers are popular because they lighten people's spirits in otherwise tedious jobs, Stonehill said.

Landscapes, reproductions of great paintings or intricate fractal images appeal to people's aesthetic sensibilities. Erotic images aren't far removed from the days when girlie pictures decorated factory walls.

The newest trend is personalizing screen savers with family photos - Mom and Dad, the kids, the dogs, the grandkids.

"Marshall McLuhan, among others, pointed out that people enjoy seeing things they're familiar with in new media," Stonehill said. "One way to personalize a computer, make it less chilly, is to give it human qualities, such as the ability to look at people we love."

Screen savers are the ultimate form of self-expression for office drones who live by company rules when it comes to their desk, chair, phone, even clothes, said Rob Kling, a University of California, Irvine, professor who studies people and computers.

"They allow people to customize their work space," he said.

Kling, a self-described high-energy guy, said he fell in love with the food-fight screen saver that comes with PC Tools, a popular utilities program.

"Imagine someone throwing pies at your screen," he said, describing it.

But the food fight lasted only 48 hours before Kling's practical side took over, and he switched to something more subdued.

"People coming into my office kept looking at it," he said. "Maybe they found it more interesting than me."

Virginia White's screen saver, UnderWare from Bit Juggler, sends Tarzan swinging through her files.

"I like a bit of wildness in my computer," said White, a Fullerton, Calif., woman who teaches computer skills to senior citizens. "I used to be very reserved and inhibited, and I got liberated."

Stan Sabin, a Huntington Beach, Calif., real estate broker, prefers 3DPC, an animated, three-dimensional screen saver that keeps assorted balls, dragons, gears and other objects in constant motion. How does it match his personality?

"I like to be active. I'm very seldom doing one thing at a time," Sabin said, eating lunch as he talked.

Other people are content using screen savers built into Windows or PC Tools. They're the same folks who don't hang art on their walls, said Nick Rush, an executive vice president at Berkeley Systems, a leading screen-saver company.

In other words, they're unimaginative. Uncreative. Boring.

"Those people are not our customers," Rush said.

No-nonsense types find screen savers distracting.

"I don't know why they appeal to people," said Mike Iglesias, a senior technician at UCI's computer center. "I don't leave the machine on long enough to worry about having to use a screen saver."

Other practical types can't bear to part with the couple of megabytes of space a screen saver occupies.

"I use an IBM notebook, and I'm constantly fighting for disk space," said Chuck Bowes, owner of the FutureKid children's computer-learning center in Newport Beach.

It's understandable that people who consider their computers just another tool wouldn't want to play with them, said Dawn Piel, a Lake Forest, Calif., interior designer.

"When we're using it in a business, we really don't have time to give it two thoughts," Piel said. "We're either using it or it's off."

Still, screen-saver connoisseurs outnumber critics.

Abar confesses to owning UnderWare - that's where her smoke-belching dragon comes from - After Dark and Delrina's Far Side comic strip screen saver. That's just at home. At work she uses screen savers from Windows and PC Tools.

"What do I think my choice of screen savers says about me?" she asks. "Clear evidence that I must have way too much money."