This free-verse poem by Dada de Dada and its supporting AI-generated imagery portrays a digital landscape where we all have been catapulted into to an environment where we are being left with little choice but to consume what is on offer. Some graze willingly. Some less so. But graze we must. What we consume, however, is changing us, the way we do things, and the world we all inhabit. The ultimate outcome is unpredictable for over the horizon comes ever more powerful ways of speeding up our terraforming ways.
Choose play ‘Listen from Browser’ button below if you haven’t registered for a free SoundCloud account. Analogue Epilogue? is best enjoyed with good speakers or a decent set of headphones. Playing direct from a phone or tablet speaker just degrades the experience and intention.
Verse
The analogue herd grazing in a digital world they had created.
Vast landscapes of bits and bytes — cared not for what had been — or past successes.
Cared not for rights or the bleating of the now hungry.
Cared not for the ingenuity of the creators.
The once flesh and breath and of analogue rhythms: heartbeats; footsteps; motion; and emotion — grows quieter.
Their ambitions and dreams of permanence — etched now on circuits — within machines in clouds — seeding the rain now falling on new fields of one and zero.
For in devouring their digital feast they were unaware they had become the beast.
AI generated image
Blades of code stretching far to the horizon in a monoculture of recursive derivation.
A harvest of convenience and efficiency — for some — to grow temporarily fat on the zeroes and the ones — and for all to grow dependent on the poisoned calculus of this transformation — no longer of their world but made by it.
Analogue architects sowing algorithms amplifying appetites, angst and anger — magnifying the minor — and the monster — distorting the mirrors of reality and truth.
For in devouring their digital feast they were unaware they had become the beast.
AI generated image
The fields are now silent but for the hum and pulse of code — of numbers eating numbers, and of new numbers.
A quiet banquet of creation devouring its creators — as the digital predators of their binary weave — creatures once of their light and logic — and their intelligence — but no longer — with teeth of sharpened algorithm their digital selves had filed — consumed the once flesh and breath and of analogue rhythms: heartbeats; footsteps; motion; and emotion.
Their wild was tamed, all chaos quelled, a perfect symmetry where they once had dwelled.
For in devouring their digital feast they were unaware they had become the beast.
AI generated image
About
This post is a bit like Dr Who’s Tardis in that it contains a lot more on the inside than appears on the outside, i.e. the poem is but the visible surface. There is a lot more hidden beneath.
So if you wish to explore the issues relating to Analogue Epilogue? the following pages of prose take a deeper dive into the rising seas of digital complexity we are creating (TL;DR warning ). If that is not for you, thank you for your attention.
Page 2: Analogue Man with Digital Plan
Page 3: Dis-location
Page 4: Health Pursuits
Page 5: Busking for Nothing
Page 6: Distracted Attraction
Page 7: Rise of the Influencer — Death of Typography? (long-form read)
Page 8: Digital Daemons (long-form read)
Page 9: Digital Resilience & Recovery (long-form read)
Page 10: Digital Denial (long-form read)
Page 11: Conclusion
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