Technology and the Human Condition

 
I think it was circa eighteen forty something,
When I woke up from the operating table, 
The good doctor told me “Congratulations! 
Now you can do anything if you’re willing and able.” 

I gazed around the operating room, 
Which looked like a watch maker’s workstation, 
I thought the man was more of a mad scientist, 
A nihilist when he told me I was his latest creation. 

“I’ve given you something special” he said, 
“You can have a long, long life if you desire, 
You are unique in many ways but don’t forget, 
To wind your gears and you will never tire.” 

I was amazed when I looked at myself in the mirror, 
My chest cavity was open showing a beating clock, 
The mechanism was pumping regular and steady, 
Like a ceremonial cadence with the beat on lock. 

But over the years as everyone grew old, 
My mechanical heart hardly let me age, 
After four decades the good doctor passed, 
And that is what brought me to this stage. 

I was picked up by a traveling circus, 
And came to fame with the appliance, 
I was a strange and curious creature, 
A wonder of the then modern science. 

They all paid a special price to see me up close, 
They marveled at the inner workings of the piece, 
Men wondered how in the world it all worked, 
Some women would faint and drop to their knees. 

But there was a particular woman, 
Who took a special interest in the device, 
And in the afterglow of our merry making, 
She’d caress my chest like it was a prize. 

Do you want to wind it? I used to ask her, 
Opening the glass door to my mechanical heart, 
She’d smile as her delicate fingers turned the gears, 
Resetting it in the mornings when the day would start. 

At the turn of the century I left the circus, 
Time it seemed had just been very slow, 
The era was changing and so was my life, 
Everyone seemed to fade away and go. 

And still my mechanical heart beats, 
Steady, always ready and primed, 
With a ritualistic rhythm and tempo, 
Like a clock, ticking, marking my time. 

Tech is a tricky two-edged sword...
it bites with ease  
same as it cuts...  
 
It teases with treats...
then leads us astray  
makes everything faster and better.
 
it's painful to see... how easily  
we give in to the slavish tendency
to fall beneath its sway...  
 
to blithely ...discard all those skills...  
we might need someday…  
(like reading and writing and maths)
to live once again in-de-pen-dent-ly...
 
         ...of technology...
 
You know...?
     when the power goes, Ppft! again…
          ...as it has in the past...