Digitalis

With GPS and text and tweet,
with Google search and Google maps
and zoomed-in views of every street
and all those other handy apps;

with mobile here and Wi-Fi there
and data packets streaming past
and Bluetooth transfer everywhere
and all the wikis filling fast,

we need no longer memorize
or plan, or wait, or understand;
we merely have to energize
and tap a screen with each demand.

Why trouble much to learn or know
more than the flick of find and fetch,
and where electric sockets grow,
and how far charging cords will stretch?

A comfort of our own kind around,
we stoke the rumors that we heed
and spurn all those who would confound
the dogged dogmas that we breed.

Connections thought to interrelate
but made in bilious density
turn out instead to separate,
fanning passionate intensity.

Not touching things that might leave scars,
not caring what disturbs and scares,
we're safe and svelte in cyber bars,
death dealt by joystick from our chairs.

Recall the brilliant foxglove plant
which tamed will tame the frantic heart,
but taken raw will trip a rant,
then stupefy and tear apart.

~~~~~~~~~~

Douglas Logan

2010

Digitalis also appears in Yaakov Murchada.

Comments

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In Plato's PHAEDRUS, Socrates tells the story of the Egyptian god-king Theuth’s reaction when introduced to the invention of letters:

This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves will discourage the use of their own memories within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. (Yates 39; quoting PHAEDRUS 274C-275B, tr. H.N. Fowler)

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Iambic tetrameter! You're scaring me man! -
"we need no longer memorize . . ."
Nice!