Systems Failure OR Oh, But If...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Information technology is a wonderful thing although I suspect it is leaving me behind, but at least I can read, write, wrestle fairly successfully with numbers and don’t need a computer to write a poem in my head…

Oh, and yes, I can go into common sense mode with ease as well. [Whatever happened to that plain, old-fashioned common sense upon which world societies once turned?]

Nowadays, I suspect we get our priorities if not wrong, exactly, then muddled to say the least. Technology must take its share of the blame. More of us are relying on it to the extent that we are getting lazy about thinking for ourselves. Worse, some people actually prefer social networks to meeting up and chatting face to face with people and friends.  (Is it any wonder social and interpersonal skills are going much the same way as common sense?)

No, I am not knocking new technology, but we should remain alert to the truism, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Information technology, for all its wonders, remains vulnerable to human input.

The Scottish Robert Burns expressed it well in his own dialect, which more or less translates as 'the best laid plans of mice and men are apt to go awry.'

 “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” - Robert Burns (1759-1796)

SYSTEMS FAILURE or OH, BUT IF...

If…

life is about humility,

love a question

of values, democracy 

a state of mind, (freedom)

so…what?

If…

a body, becomes numb,

(even dumb)

behind twitching curtains

of acid rain, what aid for us

in IT?

If…

to rummage e-archives

for inspiration,

we amateur philosophers

are driven, what if we haven’t

a clue?

So…

we could ask a computer

what IT's all about,

but don’t forget garbage in,

garbage out, may well see us

shut down

Copyright R. N. Taber 2000; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appeared in The Language of Life, Poetry Today (Forward Press) 2000 and subsequently in Love And Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001.]