American BCI

American BCI

American Pie, but with less pie and more brain computer interfaces.

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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