Digital World, Analog Robots

When we dream,
Is it in glorious 1080i HD
DLP DTS 16:9 widescreen,
Or is it just a dream?

When we think of a tree,
Is it in 5.1 megapixel, 2400x2100
1200 dpi resolution,
Or is it just a memory?

When we touch,
Is it through a Bluetooth-enabled PAN
And 802.11b wireless connectivity,
Or is it just touching?

When we draw,
Is it in raster and vector layers
With 256 system-optimized colors,
Or is it just a drawing?

When we talk,
Is it in CDMA trimode-capable VoIP
With polyphonic ringtones and no roaming,
Or is it just talking?

When we listen,
Is it in SACD dualdisc,
Dolby C noise reduction, and 192 Kbps Fraunhofer compression,
Or are we even listening at all?

When we cry,
Do we cry tears of deionized water
Filtered through an active charcoal matrix,
Or are they just tears?

And when we write,
Is it in UTF-8 3.2 GHz with Hyperthreading Technology,
XP, and an 800 MHz front side bus,
Or is it all just ink on paper?

---

Originally written:    October 31, 2005-November 9, 2005
Put online:    December 9, 2005
Discussion:    I woke up from a dream with the idea for this poem dancing in my head. In fact, I woke up with the question of the very first stanza being asked in my mind. I woke up wondering, somewhat in a smart-ass way, if we dream in high definition. The rest of the ideas came rather quickly, and they show many of my geek-like tendencies. The poem itself is, I feel, fairly straightforward. It's about the usually mindless race for all the latest gadgets and toys. It's about forgetting our humanity. And really, when it comes right down to it, very little has changed in thousands of years.


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