POEM: POEMS FROM A PRIMADONNA

 

 Power Surge     

Once the circuit

is opened,

the obligation

of electrons

must be discharged.

 

Caprice  

That this bit

of cosmic debris

from the GREAT MOMENT

OF BEING;

this speck of star dust,

this mote carrying 

the most minute 

winding of DNA.

That this rocky,

cooling,

shore-less Eden 

is the ONE,

lone cradle of life

among all the stars

in the universe—

would suggest

an unseemly pique

expressed during

the creative process.

 

Squash!

Do microbes wither

Long while you dither?

Do you feel a tug

While squashing a bug?

Crickets cease chirping

At your usurping?

Do, now sleepless, moths

Grow frightened of cloth?

And, have you a care

For insects you scare?

Do mice take retreat

By din of your feet?

Do birds take to air

Whenever you’re there?

Do blind bats scatter

Fleeing your chatter?

Do cats cease purring

While you're bestirring?

Does your old dog groan,

burying its bone?

 

Will lions and bears

All flee from your stares?

Elephants forget

That you’ve won the bet?

Whales move their stable

Now that you’re able?

Will squids sink deeper

Now that you’re keeper?

 

Oh, Behemoths we are!

Like a gas-gorged star.

For what this does bode,

I pray we implode.

 

Making Sense of Poppies

I pen for those

In stride who died.

I pen in stride

For those who died.

I pen, for those who died, 

in stride.

 

Lake Simcoe

A late summer's algal bloom;

a generation of town and farm runoff,

a great swath of lime-green froth

stretching from the shoreline 

to the bay's mouth, 

paler against the blue-green 

of deeper waters, 

whose ancient bed 

ice giants once carved 

to their liking.

But such life is not wanted, 

these days, mostly, 

or just now,

when the boon of summer

draws down to make way

for a different season.

 

It’s a final rush, though,

awkward and impatient.

And unstill.

Changeable, it's soon broken 

by wind and waves

between the long arms 

of the bay's rocky shores.

It's like the one begun much earlier, 

by charcoal-burners

with their shovelled cinders

and curses, and later

by iron-workers’ smoothbores

and stew pots.

 

Tell Me

There are so many stories now;

the world is full with them.

Tales of moment and outcome, 

loss and desire,

they fill the land’s stony cracks

with a ready soil.

Dangerous seas brim full

with unabashed ne’re-do-wells

and comeuppance.

Dry winds carry the chatter

of incessant fictions.

Even wild dogs bark sonnets. 

And in deserts, 

silence is broken

by the song of sages—

their words echoing down

from long-fallen trees.

And all this to keep the warmth 

of those early fires.

 

Lines 

In troubled lands,

the blowing sands

erase more than 

all conflicts can.

 

Untitled

Bali Ha'i will blow soon.

Maybe  June.

Maybe noon.

So away we go soon. 

To the moon. 

To the moon…

 

 

 

 

 

THERE’S ONLY ONE MONKEY IN THIS HOUSE, so I take full responsibility for the above bananas I’ve dropped in this post, and for any wayward peels that that might be slipping hazards as they slowly decompose into less problematic detritus. Sorry about that. Be safe.

 

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, I'VE JUST STARTED READING Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and if I have anything intelligent to say about it, I’ll do a proper book review when I’m done reading. But I must say, the first couple of hundred pages (it’s a door-stopper!) I find jaw-dropping! She describes a new type of capitalism, or more accurately, a new iteration of the system that has been with us for the last couple of hundred years or so.  

TRADITIONAL, old-school Capitalism began with the gradual breakdown of feudalism’s manorial system during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and with the establishment of “mercantilist” trading networks, and the growth of clearly defined nation states. The development of steam powered machinery and the use of fossil fuels made possible “industrial” capitalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while computers and information technology ushered in “information" capitalism, during the mid-twentieth century, that we are all familiar with, today. 

HOWEVER, Zuboff argues that a fourth type has emerged during the first two decades of the twenty-first century that she calls “surveillance” capitalism. She argues this new economic model is "unprecedented" in its  ability to promote "creative destruction" in our economies and our societies. She sees this radical new form of capitalism as an existential threat to ourselves as individuals and to our society at large, and she sees three factors as critically important in its development:

 

    The World's Most Adorable  Place to Work!

FIRST, THE INCREDIBLY RAPID GROWTH of the “tech” sector in our economies during this period. SECOND, the fallout after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States which saw  governments, worldwide, dramatically expand their security and surveillance networks. THIRDLY, the failure or inability of governance bodies to articulate policies or even conceptualize the laws and regulations needed to curb the power and scope of companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. All three of these mega-corporations  are leaders and exemplars  in a new, largely opaque and not well understood, economic activity that Zuboff calls "Surveillance Capitalism". She focuses on these three corporations because they have come to shape and dominate the growing digital landscape of our time. 

 

SHE WARNS, IN A 2015 Journal of Information Technology (JIT) article, that such companies, part of the emergent “Big Other”, have business models using:

“…unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behaviour while producing new markets of behavioural prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.” ¹

 

I generally take dystopian forecasts with a grain of salt (I mean, the Doomsday Clock gives us over a minute and a half to go before midnight, after all. Plen-ty of time!) But Zuboff’s crisp prose and carefully crafted arguments provide, in fascinating detail, how modern technology companies (as well as old school industries, governments and intelligence services, as they, too, join the fray), are creating new revenue streams and surveillance systems that are orders of magnitude greater than anything George Orwell could have imagined. 

 

JUST ONE EXAMPLE IS HOW SOME AMERICAN insurance companies contemplate, in the not-too-distant future, when it will be possible, and more importantly, seen as acceptable, to digitally monitor drivers, recording data on their driving speed, turning and braking habits, duration of vehicle use, locations visited, car maintenance information, and so on. This information can then be used by insurers to provide individualized insurance policies for their marks customers. Coupled with facial recognition software, street cameras, even bio-data from smart "wearables" giving real-time information on a driver’s heart rate, pulse, body temperature, etc., all to compile a dishearteningly detailed package of personal information that is hoovered-up by Big Other companies and sold to insurers so you can get gold stars and cheaper insurance premiums or else get taken to the cleaners because you cut off that old lady driver, one time. 

Their dreams. Your nightmare. Have a nice day....

Another example? Well, we all remember a couple of years ago when “Alexa”, that virgin oracle at Amazon Inc.'s Temple of Information and All Knowing, was caught being “ON” when it was supposedly "OFF", causing a certain amount of  consternation with subscribers whose private conversations were “captured accidentally" by the device. Amusing? Yes. Embarrassing? You bet. Accidental? No way. (It was just Amazon test-driving their beta version. No worries.) And driver-less cars? What could possibly go wrong? That's just the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

 

I'M NOT ASHAMED TO SAY that I am greatly concerned with Shoshana  Zuboff's compelling vision about this new type of capitalism, one less than two decades old, just a babe, really, but one that challenges, often baffles, and regularly leaves behind in its wake, governments and legislators, industry regulators, competitors, and the general public. Meanwhile, it races ahead at warp speed, carrying out Big Other’s goal of digitizing absolutely  everything (literally!) and carving out new revenue streams from its vast trove of ill-gotten bits and bytes.

Jeeze Louise! I think I'll start writing with a quill pen and ink again!

 

Cheers, Jake.

____________________________

   

^{1. “}Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization.” Journal of Information Technology (2015). JIT Palgrave MacMillan. palgrave-journals.com/jit/

 

 

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For A Human Future At the New Frontier of Power. Hachette Book Group. New York, NY, 2019. Print.

 

 

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