David Soubly

THE META-VERSE

This afternoon, I met a verse creeping from my hand.
It seemed to be examining the order of the land.
I asked it for enlightenment; I didn’t understand.
“You realize,” it said, “that much of poetry is bland.”

“My role,” it said, “is simple: I’ll encourage you to see
The fallacies and figments that comprise our poetry.
We think we understand the promise of technology;
But really all we’ve done is make some fancy bumblebees.

“These digital swarms surprise us; into gaming land...

It is an old story for two reasons. Is is old because it happened last century, in 1944. It is also old because it is timeless: it describes ordinary people - often families - choosing death over a life they believed would be worse.

For a few weeks, in 1944, Americans battled Japanese on the island of Saipan in World War II. Look it up if you must: young mens’ lives blown to bits, instantly, on both sides, the concrete expression of political struggle. (1)

What makes the Saipan story...

We’ve all been to the zoo. Some zoos do better than others at recreating natural habitats, so the animals they confine can enjoy the illusion of freedom.

Visiting one such zoo, I studied a female elephant in her enclosure. The elephant’s behavior puzzled me. She would step forward onto a horizontal log, and it looked like she was about to cross over it. Then her rear leg would lift and bend slightly. As if this slight movement had tugged a rope, she would stop, then step backward off the...

This happened to me quite a few years ago, when I was a relatively new manager. Early one morning, I was in my office, doing manager things. Suddenly, one of my supervisors burst through the door and shouted, “Why did you fire my programmers?”

That was a lively start to the day, especially before coffee. I knew I hadn’t fired anyone. Had I? Still, I worked for a big company, and anything could happen. Had I missed a headcount meeting?

“Sit down,” I said, which was stupid, because she’d...

Let’s discuss a number.

500,000.

Numbers by themselves are merely data or at best, rudimentary information. Individual bits of data are rather meaningless (and thus, without much value) until we connect them to other bits of data. Take your social security number. A string of nine digits and two dashes that don’t mean much, unless you — or a criminal — attach your name and other elements to it. It’s then valuable. It’s then information.

There are different connections we can make to this...