Issue 18 (2020): Technology
How does technology, with all its biases, affect our lives? How might something as simple as a salad spinner, as familiar as a karaoke machine, or as complex as computer-generated haiku forge conversations across generations and cultures?
Two-Eyed Seeing is viewing the world through one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing and the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing.
My mother is mystified by the salad spinner, / mesmerized by its whir and endless spin, / suspicious that it could do a better job / than her hands that know vegetables so well, / hands that know how to wash the silt from greens /
21 and I’m dispensing eight months of rent / to feel some weighted kind of fleshy titillation / trans girls from YouTube said it would be painful / having silicone bags shoved into the bust – / but then again, all the lips : hands : teeth : tongues ....
there was no way to tell / before / just how / hard a floor could be / no reason to know / the hours one could zoom / through days / dazed, cross legged / seated posing / laptops on laps / tablets on tummies / work life balance
On the screen, a woman appeared to float in a landscape of darkened clouds as she walked among Asian male angels or ballet dancers.
I wrote a computer program to write haiku. This was in 1994 or thereabouts. I wrote it in PASCAL. Here is its best work: The taller teacher / enlightens slowly, but this / ignorance consumes. / Or rather not its best work. It had no best work.
With a chronic pain condition, swimming is the most comfortable sport. For many months, my ten-year-old, $12 stopwatch in its water-resistant plastic bag accompanied me to the public pool.
Sometimes it can feel like algorithms have a deep understanding of my needs, even before I do. Sometimes I'm no longer sure of when my actions are influencing the algorithms and when the algorithms are influencing me.
Ah, how to explain to you, Warrior Queen, / your name has just been invoked by a bot / generating poetry by fictional expansionist aliens? / Welcome to our millennium, Mother of Forsaken Queens. /
Being comfortable would be fantastic, but I know not to expect too much. I should be able to hold my head straight and move my right hand unhampered by the chair. My right hand functions the best; it's the hand I rely on.
Boy and girls were given the task to build software from scratch, / Their very own. / The boys got to it immediately, building it up from bones. / Began to hatch, / A plan, a strategy to wind it up, put in the least amount of work. /
“We’re gonna be taking out a lot of dirt then, eh?” Keith said. “Any idea how much?” Without waiting for an answer, both men turned and walked up the hill. In the distance, I heard the surveyor answer: “I’m guessing several truck loads.”
Maryam Heba describes herself as a Muslim woman from the Middle East, a first-generation immigrant to Canada, a Life Sciences graduate, an advocate for women in science, and someone who is passionate about combining science, art, and storytelling.