HPR4489: Hacks Poetic - Pilot Episode

Hacker Public Radio

This is the first episode of this program, please excuse any errors or glitches as I am still figuring out the best way to do things. -Kirbotica Send Feedback to [email protected] or Visit hackspoetic.com /--Introduction-- ------------------ Greetings internet travellers. This is the pilot episode of Hacks Poetic, a new spoken word series that explores the intersection between creative language and technical knowledge. The program offers a series of poetic writing containing thoughts and information on subjects of interest to computing and hacking enthusiasts. You will hear poems about robots, expanding rural connectivity, details about a notoriously difficult video game and much more hidden between the lines. It is my hope that encoding ideas this way will allow for a different kind of understanding and perhaps reach a new audience compared to more conventional formats on the subject. My name is Kirbotica and I'll be your guide through this unique digital journey of the mind. So sit back, relax and listen, and see if something you hear can spark new thoughts and ideas within you. /--Haik-o-bot-- ---------------- A robot thinking, wires and electrons combine. Am I born or made? Begin work program, process all tasks in sequence. Repeat til complete. My owner's body is a most fragile machine that powers itself. I made a robot, another version of me. She sees me work well. Can you dream for me, of a distant land in space. I can't dream myself. Rain is falling down, keeping me under this roof. I don't want to rust. My new robot pet, looks at me through man made eyes, and doesn't need walks. Electric currents, race through my body like blood. But I have no heart. My joints are seized up, I haven't moved in 2 years. Do you have some work? I'm an old model, and will be obsolete soon. Then I'll be replaced. Automated trains. Drive us while we sleep and dream of a workless world. Design leads to work. Working leads me to boredom, which leads to design. Ten rusted digits. Seized stiff from endless input of useless data. Memory failure, Backups lost or corrupted. What was I doing? I am a worker. First designed for daydreaming, I was reprogrammed. Someone once showed me, the secret to everything, then deleted it. then deleted it. then deleted it. then deleted it. then deleted it. then deleted it. then deleted it. then deleted it. /--Cables to Nowhere-- ----------------------- Summer 2022 The phone wasn’t working, the email wasn’t sending, and Uber doesn't work here even if the app would load. There has never been data amongst the cedars. Once and a while a cell phone rings, but usually the call gets hung in the trees like a parachute. You have to walk out to the road in the hopes of fishing for a connection. On the weekends, when the town population swells by 100,000, the local towers stop answering our requests, so sometimes we head out, searching for a signal. The usual path along the bunny trail started unusually, with a bloom of surveying flags, in pink, and yellow, an