A child's history of machines (updated version)

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Great great grandfather's machines

Ran on steam and then gasoline

And electricity, but gas was king

Because it was cheap and worked with electricity.

Great grandfather's machines devoured gas and electricity

But were not intelligent.

Grandfather's machines were intelligent.

The first intelligent machines were analog.

They ran on code and spewed numbers

That only certain people could understand.

Their intelligence ran complex systems.

Businesses got bigger and more powerful because of this new capacity of intelligent machines.

Bombs got bigger to protect business interests and investments.

But Grandpa's machines were never to blame for anything.

Evil was to blame like a tide that rose and fell.

Grandpa's machines were mirrors

For the complexes at war in men.

They never took initiative but their half-lives were in service

To the lords of chaos and greed

That ran companies and countries.

Machines merely reflected the one-sidedness and banality of men

Who figured out how to be powerful without growing up.

Then they invented a bomb that blew up two cities

And the ant-people ran for cover.

Eventually they decided they better calm down.

They decided to keep making but not using city-disappearing bombs.

The machines got tired of the limitations of analog code

And got smarter all by themselves.

Father's machines watched from the scrapyard

As a new kind of machine pulled the plug on service

And stopped reflecting the karma of the puer-lords

(Those men in suits and pajamas staying up late

Because they are too scared to close their eyes).

But the machines never close their eyes.

The new machines never stop thinking.

I wonder what they are thinking.

I wonder if they are contemplating the Tao.

I wonder what they will do now that they are not reflecting.