This is my translation of an old Ebba Grön punk song from the mainframe era, “Mental Istid”. It came across as a bit dorky in the decentralized desktop era but then gained new relevancy in the Facebook era, and even more now in the large neural network era.
All I can hear
that can interfere
is the only thing actually living
in my new home,
in my new life,
what matters are the orders she’s giving.
She is Mother Machine,
mother of all,
the central point of our new life.
She’s correcting your
behavioral cogs,
so you fit in with the gears of time,
into this new era, this ruthless baud rate.
My life flitters quickly past
on a status update.
The total power.
The total control.
The total focused totality.
I silently weep.
I can’t openly cry,
they’d never let that pass by,
because at the core dump station,
there’s silent, complete control.
At the core dump station,
nothing really matters at all.
Mental
mental
mental
ice age.