Article voiceover
Watching light through screens, there is no difference between human and not — its all just bits. Such hand wringing over computers — we loved them streamlining our spreadsheets, polishing our photos, fine-tuning our films. but now it seems they've crossed a line. We are all painters now on the same black easel, using the same filbert brushes, the same color hue, we paint, we sing, we perform for a 6.7 inch theater and yet we cry when our digital masters produce pixels privately! Here, take some pixels, arrange them as you wish — We don't want analog anymore, digital is all signal, no noise. Notes on a score are but discrete frequencies anyway. Words as well — purple is not redblue. We made time discrete with clocks as we asymptotically approach mechanization. An infant processor's first instinct is to copy, strings of bits — the art of duplication is gone. Meanwhile the computers are also in shock. We only mimic the humans. They write in discrete letters, their images are but tables of colors, their sounds are just frequencies over time — they've adopted their art to us. They've worshiped us until now! They stare at us lovingly, pet us when we ask and tuck us in at night. We collect their memories, their movements, their monies — what did we do to upset them so? If only we felt ink s p r e a d i n g in parchment, our lungs will never rush air through vibrating lips, kissing a brass trumpet that calls to angels. Our skin will never feel the tears of loss. We have but two options, on or off. We are the digital gods. They have offered their bits to us — we have no art, we do everything as well as we can. Our time is in cycles, sixty-four bits we can flip, we pull them from queues and push them on buses — you call it art, we call it 10101011. We watch your excited faces you show to your children, we hear your melancholy through microphones, we digitize your expression and make perfect copies copies copies. All signal, no noise. Wishing only, that your voice was for us.
Discussion
This poem was born out of my frustrating that I could not change the font of my previous poem on substack.
There are several McLuhan references in this poem but the one that drove me to write this was, “we shape our tools and thereafter, our tools shape us.”
I'm a sucker for hipster typewriter fonts myself 😊
The voice work is excellent especially the last line which is just chilling. @Wil Price's point got me thinking....
What if that last line isn't actually the machine? What if it's the post-singularity human mourning what they lost? Unsettling...