thursday, january 4

speculative execution

walking across the highway, the wire
silhouettes of the deactived holiday lights
sketched beneath the streetlamps
the cars don't stop at the crosswalks this time
you get lucky once in a while but you wouldn't
want to push it too hard

it was a long weird day in computerland, all
echoing with the sense that the machinery we've
built a civilization on is rotten somewhere near
the core, close to the foundations

the machinery electrical and economic all at once
the logic of silicon and software;
the logic of expansion, enclosure, and control;
the systems and the systems they're made of

it'll pass - it'll recede into the daily cycle
in a year it will be hard to remember the specifics
of today's failure; the next one may be worse,
and anyway the last dozen mistakes and betrayals in this
endless series have collapsed into one another so quickly
that they defy narrative

but there's something cumulative here.
something is clearer now, to some of us.

tags: topics/poem, topics/technical

p1k3 / 2018 / 1 / 4