American BCI
American Pie, but with less pie and more brain computer interfaces.
American BCI
A long, long time ago,
Vaguely, I remember static pages filled with GIFs and style…
And each new CSS advance,
Would serve a site and not a trance,
And agency would linger, for a while…
But corporate interest made us shiver,
With every feature apps deliver...
Doomscrolls on your iPads,
From trolling farms and comrades
For all the folks they’ve classified,
A tailored discourse amplified...
An algorithmic genocide…
When cash and code collide!
So why, why should our agency die?
If we let the folks at Meta build their own BCI?
We can’t opt out and we’re compelled to comply,
As we kiss our self-direction goodbye.
(Kiss your self-direction goodbye)
Do you write HTTP?
As conceived by the great Tim Berners-Lee?
If your client tells you so.
Now do you believe your moral soul
Will save you from each clicking hole?
Will your cyber-ethics let you raise dough?
Well prognoses now grow rather grim,
For folks in Chrome and folks in Vim,
Surveillance tools suffuse,
To manipulate and abuse,
When every widget leads into the muck,
Every browsing fool’s a sitting duck,
On data lakes patrolled by Zuck,
When cash and code collide…
We were singing why, why should our agency die?
If we let the folks at Meta build their own BCI?
We can’t opt out and we’re compelled to comply,
As we kiss our self-direction goodbye.
(Kiss your self-direction goodbye)
While the next years are a great unknown,
Besieging kings we cannot dethrone,
Who yields now to which decree?
When the pics appear on the smartphone screen,
With their well-timed hits of dopamine
It’s a new lifetime guarantee…
With executives all world-renowned,
Shirts buttoned-up, souls broken down
Is congress unconcerned?
With what their machines have learned?
And while Altman reads a book on Spark,
We romp through FAANG’s amusement parks
Enriching corporate oligarchs
When cash and code collide
We were singing why, why should our agency die?
If we let the folks at Meta build their own BCI?
We can’t opt out and we’re compelled to comply,
As we kiss our self-direction goodbye.
(Kiss your self-direction goodbye)
Lonely fellers living in their cellars,
4chans, wokes, and fortune tellers,
The nameless hoards of broader castes,
No norms either hard or fast,
Some canceled, chased, and some harassed
The affected, and afflicted, and out-classed
Now the venom from this cyber womb
Threatens discourse to consume,
Boardrooms perform their dance
‘Bout their shares of the circumstance,
From the valley to the greenest field,
Documents leaked that once concealed,
The power to which we once appealed
When cash and code collide
We were singing why, why should our agency die?
If we let the folks at Meta build their own BCI?
We can’t opt out and we’re compelled to comply,
As we kiss our self-direction goodbye.
(Kiss your self-direction goodbye)
Accept this intimate interface,
Kindly enrich the knowledge base,
There’s merchandise to recommend!
So log on, quip and quibble, point and click,
Deep nets are just arithmetic
‘Cause AGI is hard to comprehend
Blindly we face this noxious phage,
While some still chase the highest wage,
Shareholder goals impel
A massive clientele
As fake accounts become a proxy fight
OpenAI takes larger bytes
Of new risks no firm could underwrite
When cash and code collide
We were singing why, why should our agency die?
If we let the folks at Meta build their own BCI?
We can’t opt out and we’re compelled to comply,
As we kiss our self-direction goodbye.
(Kiss your self-direction goodbye)
I met AI with clearer views
And I asked it for some local news
It returned the time of day.
I walked into a local store,
Where I read the paper years before,
But the storefront, just a query and array…
And raging on my mind and screen,
An old affront, the new vaccine...
The browser stored my token,
My feed is thus bespoken…
And so I read, bewitched, engrossed,
Each sober fear, each drunken post,
A tangled web, a toxic host.
When cash and code collide…
We were singing why, why should our agency die?
If we let the folks at Meta build their own BCI?
We can’t opt out and we’re compelled to comply,
As we kiss our self-direction goodbye.
(Kiss your self-direction goodbye)
Written by "Weird Ev" Coopersmith & AE Studio
"American Pie"
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
So bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
Did you write the book of love,
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll,
Can music save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
Well, I know that you're in love with him
'Cause I saw you dancin' in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues
I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died
I started singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
And singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
Now for ten years we've been on our own,
And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone
But that's not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
And while Lenin read a book on Marx
A quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died
We were singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
Helter skelter in a summer swelter,
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
It landed foul on the grass,
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast
Now the halftime air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance
'Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?
We started singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
And singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
Some come, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
'Cause fire is the devil's only friend
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan's spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrifical rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
We started singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
And singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
I met a girl who sang the blues,
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
And they were singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
Written by Don McClean, October 1971
