The pleasures of the software,
the digestion of the algorithm
society becomes its vomit,
produced and consumed
in the same scrolling motion
The rumours reached the plays,
the plays projected onto the screen,
the screen arriving in every home,
then shrinking to the size of a palm
We held the whole world
and called it convenience
The mind in the machine
till the machine is in the mind
But where does the soul fit
in the complex equations under the hood?
Here is what I know:
I am sitting in a chair at 10 pm
holding a rectangle of glass and metal
that is smaller than my face
and warmer than it should be
The warmth is not affection
but the heat of a billion transistors
smaller than a single virus
making a billion small decisions
about what I should see next
I mistake the warmth for something
that knows me
Attention is all it needs
(at least that’s what Google says)
And I give it away so freely
as if it were infinite,
as if it permeated everything,
as if the soul lived
in the electron’s choosing
that impossible particle
that tunnels through walls
it has no right to cross,
performing miracles
it will never wonder about
NaPoWriMo Day 14 – And now for our (optional!) prompt. Poetry is an ancient art, and one that revisits themes that existed thousands of years ago – love, nature, jealousy. But that doesn’t mean that poets live in a sort of pre-history unaffected by technological advances. Emily Dickinson wrote about trains, and I’m rather charmed by this 1981 poem about the “incredible hair” of actors on television. In a more recent example, Becca Klaver’s “Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie” draws inspiration from the contemporary drive to document everything in digital photographs. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that similarly bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.
Smoke words every day. 
5 responses to “[579] The Spectacle of Digital Society”
Great last line.
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Thank you!
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Dear Rahul,
There is a great deal to admire about your poem entitled “The Spectacle of Digital Society”. In addition, this poem is worth being presented in a rhyming version. If you decide to compose another poem with exactly the same title but adopting some rhyming scheme(s), then you are very welcome to submit your rhyming poem as a comment to the comments section of my special post entitled “📈🌆 Growing Humanity with Artificial Intelligence: A Sociotechnological Petri Dish with Latent Threats, Existential Risks and Challenging Prospects 👨👩👦👦🤖🧫☣️” for participating in the 📜 Collaborative Poetry Challenge ✍🏻 there.
In the said post, you can see that there are already 15 rhyming poems being featured stylishly. Each of the featured poems can be accessed directly from the navigational menu located at the start of the post. I believe that your forthcoming poem can be one of the best amongst them, and I would love to feature your poem alongside them. Please feel free to include any explanatory notes.
Happy mid-April to you!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle🦅
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Hey, thanks for the opportunity. Will try to rewrite it and post there in 2 days.
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Dear Rahul,
You are very welcome. I look forward to receiving your reworked poem as a comment submitted to the comments section of my special post entitled “📈🌆 Growing Humanity with Artificial Intelligence: A Sociotechnological Petri Dish with Latent Threats, Existential Risks and Challenging Prospects 👨👩👦👦🤖🧫☣️”, which you can easily locate from the Home page of my website.
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May you have a very happy and productive weekend converting your excellent poem! Please feel free to expand your poem and make it longer, especially if certain ideas or aspects of my said special post inspire or appeal to you. Any explanatory notes will also be featured alongside the poem.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle🦅
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