This poem plays on the old adage, if you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. It wonders what new tools we need to learn to use, to address our current conundrums in the field of information technology.
You swing at every problem with a hammer,
Envision every problem as a nail.
And when you find a problem you can’t handle,
You blame the gods for causing you to fail.
A farmer sees solutions in a tractor.
A lawyer sees solutions in a rule.
A writer sees solutions on his paper,
All blind, to most solutions. Each, a fool.
A soldier will attack you with his rifle.
A gardener will attack you with his spade.
Professors will attack you with their research,
And bakers, hit you, with the pie they’ve made.
The problems we now face do not conform to
These tools, that we are holding in our hands.
Infernal information now deforms us.
A flood of emails breaks our human dams.
And so, a weapon forms, to suit the problem,
And so must we now wield that tool with skill.
We wish to win. We wish to beat the demon,
But as for changing, probably never will.
Copyright 2023 Andrea LeDew
For a problem no tool can fix, read The Problem. For an essay on things we fear on the edge of the knowable world, read Monsters and Demons.
A Literary Citizen
No, I doubt we’ll ever learn.
Bad habits are hard to break. Brownie, anyone?😊
I’m a cookie gal, myself–although I wouldn’t turn down a brownie.