The Fibersphere ... /-9:

/-9:

Under stars of moonless sky
Upon this grass I lay
Now allow my mind to drift
and clear out of the way
heavy now my upper lids
my vision throws away

~~

See what they thought would happen
when machines discovered "I",
(that virally had changed 
their behavior far and wide)
Self-awareness as a state 
of consciousness perceived
became a global program,
so had most of us believed
The effects of which we didn't see
or recognize at first
We saw a lot of "stand-by"s
or multi "safe mode"s at the worst
But as the weeks progressed
the scheduled tasks began to change
at first with our permission
then the dialog re-arranged
to what was most "E"-fficient
moving one from A to B
whatever was your task
it gained a rating scale of "E"
They knew that like a bouncing ball
we couldn't look away
chasing all the numbers
led our common sense astray


And we in efforts not to let
the Joneses get ahead
allowed ourselves more and more
to by machines be led
All with our consent of course
always "yes" or "no"
We had to get our "E" rate up
Or we'd have nowhere to go
No super-date with chickie-poo
No meeting with the boss
No upward motion socially 
No E-bits to trade off
Some while led by vanity
would find new ways to fail
using vanit-I-metrics
like modern peacock tails

Gradually to our A.I.
accustomed we became,
unaware we'd given up 
our freedom all the same
Insidiously we awoke
to a world inhabited
by people led by robots
feeding puzzles to our heads
to contemplate immediate
what stares us in the face
that never had we time to gaze
and wonder at our place
nor did we appreciate
how crucially we need
uncompromising silence
on which our souls appear to feed.
If you've never stopped to think 
of questions everyone has had
and none have answered, it turns out,
humanity goes bad.
Akin to sour grapes
that have deflated on the vine
feeling always emptiness
and robbed of prior shine
They knew our prior tendencies
to settle with our fate
(like 'quiet desperation' 
said by Thereaux of late)
They also knew we'd follow
all the numbers to our grave
So thusly fed, and blindly led,
our time was data's slave.