Virtually Human
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” - George Orwell
Deception mixed with emerging AI, and the above quote suggested as a prompt by Poets and Storytellers United, inspired my thoughts and poem. It is a time when late actor Val Kilmer allowed his Deepfake version to play the role he was too ill to finish. This had me pondering the degree to which synthetic people differ from the black and white film era actors who since died but still seem so alive. Nowadays, many of us appear synthetically through various processes on screens. Some fall in love with digital companions who mimic humans but feel nothing. Conversely, humans seem on the path to desensitization, emoting virtually but light on genuine joy or empathy for suffering. Even photos of my walk are paperless pixels. Indeed, the wildly imaginative Orwell might be amazed at how seamlessly the artificial has woven into the fabric of daily life where lines between the acceptably real and not, like truth and lies, blur.
Explore more at Poets and Storytellers United, SKYWATCH and Saturday's Critters.
Seemingly alive again as if I never left the stage
Gazing but not seeing, gasping but not breathing
The copy of my former self that delivers its lines
Pretend humans like rumours keep on spreading
Machines talk to machines as if person-to-person
Electronic faces on screen, neither living nor dead
Expressing, without tiring, every mortal sensation
Pixel emotion summoned from codes they are fed
My resurrection cast as a motion-picture miracle
My voice produced virtually, to my ears unheard
My salty tears not tasted, imitations of glee unfelt
Mirror reflections of my existence eerily preserved
Check out my sites: Postcards from Penelope Puddle and Musings of A Puddlist In B.C.
Because the state of our planet is the most pressing issue of our time, link up and learn about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report and watch environmental activist, 90-year-old David Suzuki, in an interview.
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