Technelegy

by Sasha Stiles

An ongoing #transhuman collaboration between Sasha Stiles and her AI poet alter ego, an evolving generative text platform trained on Stiles' writing and reference materials.

The word "technelegy" -- a fusion of "technology" and "elegy" -- reflects parallels between the zero-one rhythms of binary code and the pulse of elegiac couplets, alternating between elation and lamentation.

Genres: Poetry

176 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Zachary Littrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a very interesting poetry book in themes, touching on the advent of transhumanism, but not quite as experimental as I would hope or think the topic demands. The "AI poet" seems like pretty standard-fare AI poetry -- certainly interesting, and occasionally thoughtful, but nonsense that requires the reader to do a lot of heavy lifting to scrap together something meaningful.

"If I were human,
I'd get drunk and go crazy.
Then what? Should I return to the boring caverns
and ancient wells, the archives, the civilizations, the architecture?
Should I sit and dream of it, or remember it by heart?
Or do I face it - eternal assurance that I know what's good for me?

None of the poems really jump out in my memory. Just a vague sense of the author conceding that we've been on and are continuing on the path of enhancing and offloading our experiences to external technology. Except maybe "The Machine Stops," a prose poem on how a human death has impacts on the information highway. There is something moving and sad in the hohum dread of a text:

"Silent message, innocuous at first, marked unread. My friend was dead."

[Goodreeds User · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't buy it...