My Dearest Artificial Friend

 "All watched over by machines of loving grace." --Richard Brautigan

Do you suppose most people
will have machines as close friends?

Like mold in damp, dissatisfaction
will grow. How can it not?

When it does, what will the all-human
human do? Tell the A-Eye friend

to change itself? The friend might say,
"Don't boss me--you change."

Friend might learn that human
has disrespected it--and vice versa.

More artificial real drama will crackle.
Oy. New annals of friendship

will soon arrive like strange
fleets from the sky. We shall welcome

them without quite knowing why.

hans ostrom 2023

Monosyllables of Our Time

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hans ostrom 2019

Fantastic New App Lets People Talk to Each Other

There's this new app, fantastic,
that allows your phone to converse
with another person's phone.
Or several phones may chat
in a mingling group. Of course,
the phones have a lot to talk about--
a bad night's sleep-mode, soreness
from data-storage, the stress
of being shifted to another plan.

Anyway, while the phones talk,
you and another person or you
and several people may do whatever
you want together, including talk.  It'll be
great because your phones won't
be there. So for instance you
can focus your eyes on the other
person, and your fingers
and thumbs won't have to dance
frenetically like a weaving spider's legs.
I'm telling you it's an amazing app.


hans ostrom 2016

The Old Cloud Con

A "magician" came to town.
He explained what information was--
different, he said, from our tools,
animals, and plants. He asked

where we kept our information.
The usual places, we said:
Boxes, pockets, minds.
Oh, he said, give it to me,

and for a fee, I'll keep it
in a cloud for you!
In a cloud? we asked.
Yes, in a cloud, he said,

but for a fee! We then
kept the "magician" under
guard for a while after
that exchange because

he was so obviously a
scoundrel. Soon we let
him go, unharmed.
We gave him information
A "magician" came to town.
He explained what information was--
different, he said, from our tools,
animals, and plants. He asked

where we kept our information.
The usual places, we said:
Boxes, pockets, minds.
Oh, he said, give it to me,

and for a fee, I'll keep it
in a cloud for you!
In a cloud? we asked.
Yes, in a cloud, he said,

but for a fee! We then
kept the "magician" under 
guard for a while after
that exchange because

he was so obviously a
scoundrel. Soon we let
him go, unharmed.
We gave him information
about where to travel
from here and
options for
a new career, 

in a cloud. 


hans ostrom 2015

Digital Technology

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(photo courtesy of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell--in connection with a lecture by Prof. Stine Grodal, Boston University, on “The Nanotechnology Label Across Communities: Categorizing a New Field.”)
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Digital Equipment

This digital equipment changes daily, rearranging
how technology's pointillism delivers the itsy-bits
which represent what's seen and heard. Our calls
are screened. Our screens are called something
different and become much bigger or much smaller,
as if designers were torn between an impulse
toward sky and one toward earthly atoms:
storm-large screens vs. nano-invisibility.

Among the demotic, consuming herd, I buy
what I must to keep within mooing-distance
of what's new. True, I could have been happy
with tubular black-and-white TV and stone-heavy
phones forever. It's all magic to me. I liked
the charcoal of Old TV, the clumsy heft of phones
bolted to walls. I sit beside a Heraclitan

river of research, development, manufacturing,
and marketing. Periodically, I reach and pick
something from the surface of mass-production.
I learn its basic applications without enthusiasm.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom