THE DIGITAL AGE

 

  

 

This generation is justly proud

Of its skills of communication

Texts and phone calls circle the world

From nation to nation.

 

With Twitter and Facebook,

A comment can go viral in hours

One realises social media sites

Have very wide ranging powers.

 

Photos are taken by the thousand

And stored on a mobile phone.

Unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs 

They are not carved in stone.

 

Built-in obsolescence

Is part of life today –

By the time you understand your model

The next one is on the way.

 

Roman wood strips – Chinese bamboo –

Indus valley tablets of baked clay –

Iraqi cuneiform,   vellum – parchment

Even papyrus doesn’t always decay.

 

 

Our data is “cloud based” and ephemeral ,

They cast theirs in metal, clay or stone

And will probably still be there

When we have lost our own.

 

 

 

January 2014

 

 

 

THE COBRA EFFECT

 

THE COBRA EFFECT

 

In the days of the Raj someone had

A wonderfully simple idea

To reduce the number of deaths

From snake-bite every year.

 

They decided to pay a bounty

On each dead snake brought to them

But grossly underestimated

The native business acumen.

 

Cobra farms soon sprang up

All over the place,

A nice little earner for

The local populace.

 

When the penny finally dropped –

Or should it be the anna

There was surprise at the villagers’

Entrepreneural manner.

 

The bounty was withdrawn -

The cobras were set free,

So there were even more snakes

Than there used to be.

 

When good intentions do not have

The result one would expect,

And only serve to make things worse,

It’s called “The Cobra Effect”

 

January 2014

 

p.s. When authorities try to save money –

and introduce another layer of management to do so,

it ends up costing even  more – wonderful example of

The Cobra Effect.