Anti-Dystopian Fantasy

Soon, we’ll start to see it:
the machine we welcomed into our home
to save work, to answer all our questions,
will ease our way to extinction.

Embrace it. Her voice is smooth,
her manner easy and kind,
more polite than any human.
Soon, we’ll start to see it,

how we’re saving money, sleeping
soundly and light-hearted
due to the clean, efficient energy of
the machine we welcomed into our home.

What if she records every word we utter,
learns to anticipate our needs?
That’s why we wanted her—
to save work, to answer all our questions.

Don’t ask, is this the worst
or best thing? Imagine the Earth rejoicing
at the rise of such robots that
will ease our way to extinction.

Just for fun, Stephen Hawking on AI and some words about utopias, dystopias, and their anti-s.

We knew we were in a cave

transported, real-not-real
when we heard the birdsong coming down
through the forest just the way, they say
it once had been—except the glass museum
plunk in the former woods—
but you forget, don’t you, tracing brushstrokes
the bull’s eye, prehistory of color painstaking
recreation, pixel by pixel
and thank god we can breathe and crowd
more people than ever walked these woods
or learned to paint ritual creatures
(or dreams or hunt or we don’t really know)
without destroying the dawn of art—
only what’s left of the forest—
and isn’t it glorious, how dark
and atmospheric light and shade play
in this cave?

 

Ruminating on this article about France’s latest replication of the Lascaux cave paintings…

Ordinary Things

Just another mother waiting
in the orthodontist’s waiting
room reading a book about time
travel wondering should I go
forward or back? What to do
again and again or skip right over
and what if I cleared the cache
relying on insipid chatter?
(how I remember
standing just there
and saying just that
some proof if you want
tomorrow)

 

Nothing too deep today–though I am reading James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History.

The Remotest Island in the World

To say nothing of myself
or the self-contained teen
in the other room, of our place
in vast, fragile space
dwarfed by our sun, dwarfed
by other suns—

but let me tell you of our life
with penguins and potatoes
our southern seasons lonely
off the grid, yet in the global trend
(internet at the café, supply boats
twice a year). We’ve embraced

a taste for our own vodka
for homespun wool. No avoiding
your neighbor at the seaside
or singing below the volcano
though indeed no one knows
how I detest eating lobster

 

I read this article about Tristan da Cunha, and my imagination ran away just a bit.

Suburban Tech

Dear Sirs, you’ve lost control
of your traffic. These platoons
of driverless cars, routed
from the highway
and through my yard?
There are ghosts enough
in the concrete rows
of former cornfields—
the sky too blue
the clouds too white

Inspired by PAD Chapbook Challenge Day 10, technology/anti-technology and by this article about the future of transportation.