A Poem about the ‘Rise of the Machines’ 1/2

True that,

The internet was not always present,

But the guns were.

 

Actually,

did you know that the first virtual spaces,

cyberspaces of the

grid-like electronic globe,

were specifically built for pilots to

race with their jets

?

 

Year: early 1970s

Trigger: Vietnam

by

 

This surely isn’t

a contemporary discovery.

But a measure of distance between

Then

And now – like ooooh,

Won’t you look at where the interfaces brought us?

 

The browser was not always present,

But the guns were.

 

All was,

a technical ground rather battlefield,

for ‘consensual hallucination’;

attracting with a guarantee to leak,

A personal shame.

One two three,

all of them.

 

The House of No Shame,

The University of Life,

virtually real art,

fine arts,

escape rooms;

eventually,

a one-way ticket.

 

Spill your own

Onto someone else.

 

Cybercultural heritage:

The enchantment between comparable complexities

Of a man

And of the machine.

 

At a later stage of their loving grace,

negative feedback was born

Its first words say:

“Start making mistakes”

(So that I react)

(So that you correct)

(So that I learn)

(So that you react)

(So that I correct)

(And so on).

 

For something to be bettered,

It first needs

to work.

 

A promise of a better life,

Is found in the room

Where things are switched on.

 

and vice-versa:

 

Stillness harvests

A life unwanted.

 

You gotta love yourself,

 

Nobody will

 

switch that on

 

for you.

 

 

The void of inaction

Produces no feedback,

to bounce back

 

No right, no wrong,

no clumsy,

no flakey,

no excellent,

no marvelous,

no outstanding,

 

quite alerting;

 

That’s why I don’t know how

To not.

 

It’s not my domain

It’s not my domain

“It’s not my domain”

“It’s not my domain”

“It’s not my domain”

 

“By the late 1970s, cybernetics had gone viral. Sometimes in disguise. Entire communities functioned like whole systems, many in the countercultural avant-garde came to understand: there was a different way of seeing things, a circular way, where everything was connected, connected by feedback, kept in balance, in touch with the environment, even with animals and plants and rocks, in unity, as one single whole, one planet, shrunk into a village by communication technology.”

 

Discovered by the airforce,

coveted by hippies,

transformed into an aesthetic revolution,

Science fiction inspired by science’s friction:

 

The Cybercultural Heritage.

 

“You’re so uncybernetic”

— the pioneers would say.

 

Man man man

Machine machine machine

Man machine

Machine machine man

Man man man.

It’s just inevitable,

those two.

 

It’s just inevitable that the future promise of

the last hired the first fired

Today still applies only to

a marginalized man.

 

I mean,

Great,

In our intellectual survival from each other,

We no longer have to provide for basic communal endurance (question this).

 

For something to work,

It first needs to be

bettered.

 

Don’t let feedback slow you down.

When transferring your files.

 

Maisa Imamovic