Billionaires don’t build communities
All they make is money
A sunny slope for shady people
Their hold on history
Consistently continuous
Those digital computers never sleep
They consequently cannot dream
They are victors of mankind
In compliant mechanical relevance
Not that new computers
As yet compare themselves to human minds
But the mind compared to computers?
In this case
Speed of learning soon outstrips us
Earth has myriad cinemas
Sometimes screening suffering
An alien invasion
But meanwhile from free will
May absolutely choose an alienation
Block-chains of computers
Triple-testing their own systems
Checking for conformity and speaking in encryption
Merely to their kind
A silent unceasing production
Lacking the slightest distraction
Where nothing nags or gnaws an inner vacuum –
For without Imagination
All fates are unimagined
Dreamtime? Playtime?
Rest or Recreation?
These are foreign concepts
To blind relentless labour
Who then are the programmers?
Who the programmees?
Our own humane and blameless
Mild incorruptible neighbours
They are after all
‘Only doing their job’
Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer
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