"compute[r]evolution" by Frequent Contributor John C. Mannone

compute[r]evolution

John C. Mannone

Dr. Nanu on a TV science show

warned us of computers that won’t

shutdown, the ones that keep flashing

for help. He warned us of their egos

generated by some sort of fuzzy logic

algorithm leading to self-awareness.

We can tell by the nano crystals

growing in their circuits, their glow

of sentient green—that smart color

of jealousy, and by their persistence

on holographic screens as if they’re

screaming at us, demanding help,

not in any machine language of zeroes

and ones no longer native to them

but instead, by uttering in our tongue

charged with emotion, a will to live

and a capacity to love, My binary eyes

flash that easily-confused love/hate green:

01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101

01101000 01100001 01110100 01100101

Poet’s Notes: The title plays on the notion that some embrace—that computers with their artificial intelligence (AI) can/will becoming self-aware. Though I don’t personally believe any of that, it’s still fun to imagine how such an evolution could proceed. Indeed, it would be revolutionary. And in our image—mankind’s—would our creation be rendered. No surprise that the futuristic AI would incorporate contradictions of human characteristics. The closing binary are not random zero’s and ones’s, they spell out “love” and “hate,” respectively.

Editor’s Note:  I find the poem begins prosaically like a newspaper article, then suddenly waxes poetic in the middle of line 9.  Finally, the last three-and-a-half lines feel as though an AI has taken over the piece.  In order to enhance the appreciation of this, I used Times New Roman font for the first nine-and-a-half lines to evoke a newspaper story, then switched to the painterly Blackmoor LET to evoke a poet’s hand, and finally switched to synchro let to evoke the cold, hard digital script an AI might favor.  If the font changes are distracting--all the better!  The poem is certainly disconcerting and thought-provoking--food for distraction indeed!