sonora2sonoma

Spent much of today

Paying back the debt incurred

By putting off

For years

The dreadfully monotonous

Business of shredding old documents—

Financial information, odd bits,

Old work notes

From my days as a social worker,

Personal stuff . . .

Assorted artifacts—

Memorabilia and dross—

Whose elimination from the aggravating aggregate

Of my “personal information”

Would be, if not beneficent

At least humane.

Whirr, whirr! (Grinding noises)!

Present payment for prior postponement!

Whirr, whirr!

mortgaged time; the Payment’s due!

Whirr, whirr!

Whirr, whirr!

Watching those words disappear,

One line at a time,

I imagine them turning into ‘ouches’

As they disappear into the event horizon

Reassuringly disguised as a mail slot,

Grinder running furiously,

Overheating & stalling repeatedly

Like an old Buick on a steep grade

On a hot afternoon.

Seeing those liberated word particles

Accumulate like a confetti alphabet

In the bowels of the word dissembler,

(Thanks to its plexiglass intestinal inspector),

Is at once gratifying and vaguely distressing.

Observing those bits of bits formally known as words

At once reduced, past morphemes

Beyond affixes

Way past phonemes

Barely recognizable bits of paper, mess and dust,

A solution long in the coming

And a nesting rat’s dream.

Witnessing that machine perform its duties

Relentlessly consuming the product

Of countless hours’ toil,

With the cold indifference

Of automated expediency . . .

Is to behold the why and wherefore,

The promise,

And the curse,

Of automation poised for domination.

Automation—

The long-sought solution

To increased productivity—

Not to lessen men’s labors,

Or lighten their loads—

But to increase efficiency,

And, therefore the profits,

Of those captains of industry

Who sit behind desks

And call it honest work.

The wisdom missing

In man’s embrace of automation,

Gateway drug to artificial intelligence,

Creates a blind spot,

A nursery,

Where AI is allowed to thrive

Unencumbered by sentiment, emotionality,

Reflection 

Or discernment!

What could possibly go wrong?!

In the personification of obsolescence

What, or who’s next?

Whirr, whirr!

Tim Konrad,

June 3, 2021