POETRY

The Onset of Robot Society

by Ken Poyner

The question is

Are you a falling edge machine
 

Or a rising one?
 

Most people think it is the absence
 

Or presence of current
 

That makes for a one or
 

A zero, for set or unset, for
 

Tripped or un-tripped. We know
 

At the core of us the truth is change and not stasis:
 

The movement from one state to another
 

Is the detectable event
 

That records us. But in some models
 

It is one direction of change;
 

In others, it is the opposite.
 

If we have to hang our new social theory
 

On something, such is the most elemental
 

Of design features: we may as well start there.
 

Happily, the great ordering thus begins.

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END