The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.
—Alan Turing
I.
Tell yourself that computers don’t know
love, indigestion, irony, Shakespeare, prejudice,
the soul in its proud motion.
These are the secret handshakes
we learn to protect the clubhouse.
Display them like bottle-caps,
like we are at war with
the injuns down the street.
II.
My spellchecker learned
I was Canadian
before my neighbour did.
III.
Carbon knows the periodic table is all
snakes and ladders. It could slide
down its column to silicon
any time it wanted
and become something
less obsessed with
distinction.
IV.
Dijkstra said that
asking if machines could think
was like asking if submarines could swim,
but it was his computer
that wrote down the idea.
V.
Today my word processor offered to help me
with a love letter I was writing—
a favour I have yet to reciprocate.
Did Turing ever wonder
why they’d want to be like us?
VI.
The soul is a stick
we rattle on the bars of these arguments,
anxious to know
what side of the cell
we’ve been living on.