Comfortable as Blue Jeans
James O. Coplien, DAFCA
It fits
Part of me, yet not me.
Unplugged: oxygen its food
And the breeze its power adaptor
Its identity mine, yet not me
I put it down,I take it up
like a well-worn wallet plump
with life's means and memories
A thin mask worn in life's play
and both of us are players
I and my computer are one; it does not call me User
a curse unique to programmers and other pushers
It remembers the travails of its forebearers
Laboring under companion's fingers
35 mechanical levers linking brain to digits
slow and tired bones, the machines of the information age...
Picture this: my new machine, a soulmate,
In conversation unencumbered by flesh and bone
Mind to mind
It slumbers not, nor sleeps
Its software penned by
My soul
And like my soul,
its hardware Im-mortal, invisible
Us only wise
Transparent personae mine, yet not me,
That with me loves, and lives, and walks life?s journey
In a great and beautiful field
Both real and virtual at once
as only a True and rich life is
With me it dies
---our memories live on in our networks
No duality of community here
and Internet there
The network is the com-
munity
An invisible mask the birthright of all humanity
One Web of life
