Robot Speak

Artificially Intelligent machines are here and are already talking to each other. The poems, transactions, programs, and spells collected in this volume explore how AIs might use our language to make their own. It's impossible for the human observer to know if the machine is analyzing or tabulating data, performing a calculation, conducting a negotiation, or making a persuasive appeal. These texts occur in three different modes, each developing by permutations, repetition, and sound/rhythm. In the first mode, repetition of key words imitates a transactional language, as if a carnival barker is making a pitch to a potential audience, or as if a magician is reciting an incantation to summon a familiar spirit. In the second, a limited vocabulary is used as a transactional language. In the third, words generally found in the magical thinking of the day are used for far different ends. In the machine world of the future, communication could be mysticism or it could be control.