Tag Archives: newauthoronline

Utopia

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I saw Utopia like some bright star.
It burned far
Away and the nearer
I drew the clearer
It shonne on bones white
That glistened in it’s baileful light.

I saw man, his head in a book,
He dained not to look
At the earth but dwelt
In a world of ideas and felt
That if only man would conform to his abstract theory
This planet dreary
Would become a paradise, where man would reach for the sky.

As time passed he wondered why
The star
Was just as far
Away
As the day
On which he first read Marx or some other sage.
The theorists’s rage
He did mark
With tombstones stark
Which the idealist built
Employing the spilt
Tears of men
Who when
He spoke of Utopia shook their heads
With dread.

One Utopia has fled
Yet the blood that bled
Will blead
Again
If terror’s reign
Remains unconstrained
By the knowledge of past pain.

New generation buying books to express their personalities

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According to an article in “The Telegraph” a new generation are buying books in order to express their personality. Some of these books remain unread on shelves but, a Foyle’s representative does not see this as a problem as, sooner or later these works will be picked up by their owner and read. For the article please go to, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/29/new-generation-buying-books-to-express-their-personalities/

Watch out authors (well, maybe)

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A couple of weeks ago I fell into conversation with a teacher of music. She had just purchased my book, “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind” and our conversation turned to matters of creativity. I asked whether she believed that computers would ever be able to produce music of the same standard as that of Mozart and other great composers? She responded with a question of her own, “could a computer ever produce poetry of the same standard as that of the great poets?”
The above is an interesting question. There is a tendency perhaps inate in we humans to deny that something is possible merely on the grounds that it’s occurance fills us with forboding or abhorrence. However gut reactions are not (usually) the best means of answering complex questions.
As regards my own view of the matter, the simple answer is that I have no idea as to whether machines will ever be capable of producing works of artistic merit. The great advantage of we humans is that we possess emotions which are interwoven in our art whether literary, painting or musical. I suspect (and I am no scientist) that it will be easier for those working in the field of artificial intelligence to produce machines which are of similar intelligence (or perhaps exceed) that of humans. However to reproduce genuine emotion will, I suspect be a far more difficult task so intellectual pursuits may well be one of the last bastions to fall to AI. Its also perfectly possible that “true” AI will never be achieved as there is still much debate about what, exactly constitutes real intelligence, (merely because an extremely fast computer could, in the future have access to all known information and be able to process it at greater speed than a human would not make it more intelligent than mankind for intellectual abilities reside in far more than processing power).
Below is a piece of speculative fiction written by me in early 2015. As ever I would be interested in your views. https://newauthoronline.com/2015/01/18/robert/
Kevin

Train

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My thoughts travel back
Down history’s track.
I hear the clack
Of the wheels of the train
Running through my nostalgic brain.
I recollect separate carriages, each with an individual door,
And me reading,
My imagination feeding
On the contents of a magazine,
Today, no longer seen.
Who could ask for more?

Often I sat alone.
There was No mobile phone
To disturb my contemplation.
The nation
Has moved on.
And the old characterful trains have gone.
I have to accept
That which I would reject,
A perfect world of plastic and chrome
Where man sits alone
Conversing with his friend, the phone.

—

I remember travelling on trains with separate carriages, each compartment having comfortable seats and holding (if memory serves correctly) a maximum of 6 people. The

To my Dog, Trigger

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trigger-in-his-bed

My dog yelps in his sleep.
Can a canine weep?
And what thoughts of joy or pain
Pass through his sleeping brain?

In an exstasy of sound and smell
You dwell.
The freshly roasted chicken, just out of reach is sheer hell
To my friend
Who’s end
Is food and play.

Your day
Will not be so long as mine,
Yet we humans whine
While you in the moment live
And give such love
To your god above
Who sits envying you your state of grace.
Would that I could change place
With you
My friend true.

The Internet of Things

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“The Blackbird on the wing, so sweetly sings
And brings
Joy to we two
Who
Through
These wild flowers
Walk and talk,
Whiling away many an hour”.

But she put no store
In my words
Nor in the singing of the birds,
Which went unheard,
For the ring
She wore
Was connected to the Internet of Things.

The Tower

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A man all his efforts bent
To the exclusion of all else,
On the construction of a tower called self.
The higher it went
The less content
He grew.
Breaking through
the clouds
And feeling proud
He saw
A boy soar,
Then fall, seaward bound.
Icarus was the boy’s name
And from his fall nothing profound
Came
For man continues his building just the same.

Crystal Ball Gazing

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Will the click of a mouse
In the virtual house
Of the brain
Replace
Nature’s sweet face?
Or can man restrain
The genie who, perhaps already half woken,
His words as yet unspoken,
Holds out visions of heaven and hell.

Will men dwell
In the half light
Where day and night
Lose all meaning
And seeming
And fact become as one?
Has man gone
So far
That we lose who we are?

Can rich variety be reduced
And man seduced
By the girl made up of data?

Sooner or later
These things may come
To pass, but history does run
In strange ways, and the historian shakes his head
At the futurologist, now long since dead
Who said
“It is inevitable, For X must lead to Y”.

Ideas live and die.
The historian sighs
And thinks on why
Man tries to make the world conform to some abstract law.
He has seen it all before
And puts but little store
On those enamoured by neat little rows.
The futurologist may into the future stare
While history’s winding track leads heaven knows where.