Recently my son and I visited Bletchley Park, home of the World War Two Code breakers. It was really interesting seeing the early 'Bombe' computers designed by Alan Turing and his team that helped crack the Enigma code.
Then I realised I had nothing for a open/prose poetry night, so I looked through some notes for a blog piece I was going to write about modern smart phones verses old massive super computers, some of the 'facts' I had learnt were....
A modern smart phone.......
Has a million times more memory than all of N.A.S.A's computers in 1969 had.
Can do more calculations a second than I.B.M's Super Computer 'Deep blue' that beat Gary Kasporov at chess in 1997.
And a birthday card that chirps 'happy birthday to you' has more processing power than existed in the whole world at the end of The Second World War.
All the above 'facts' are taken from the internet so the validity of them should be approached with caution but following Moore's Law they could well be true....
The above photo was taken on my phone (which then for an encore paid for lunch in the cafe using Android pay...) with its 12 megapixel camera and is twice the resolution of my ageing Nikon DSLR which now sits in a drawer collecting dust as it can't email or back up photos by Wi-Fi or 4G..... It has to be connected to the computer by a lead! How 'Noughties' is that?
Anyway I thought instead of a blog piece (even though I've sort of done it above) I'd write a poem for the first time since a teacher said something like.... 'For your homework I want you to write a poem on...... (insert random subject)' thirty odd years ago....
If it doesn't scan right or the rhythm is wrong to you then.... I don't give a monkeys...... as I'm quite proud of it for a first attempt at poetry in decades.
Oh and the irony is EE suffered a breakdown whilst I was writing it, so my phone at the time was either.... A thick-phone or a smart-brick.... Anyway for your reading pleasure here's.... (and as with all poetry it needs to be read out loud)
Ode To My Smart-Phone
A small computer resides in my pocket
more memory than in NASA's rocket
Faster greater than IBM's Deep Blue
How they fit it all in, I haven't a clue
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Turing could've used it to break the Enigma code
The Sat Nav can guide me to the door of your abode
With Google I have a large Cyclopedia
Families send photos on social media
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On You-Tube I can watch your epic fails
Am I always at work as I get my emails
I could make a phone call from it I suppose
Or stand up and from it loudly read prose
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What do we do with all this power?
Listen to music hour after hour
I can order a meal, not bothering to cook
But mostly we share videos of cats on Facebook
(c) Simon Elson 2016
Photo Credit (c) Simon Elson. A working reconstruction of a 'Bombe' computer at Bletchley Park
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