the weight of a signal

“The highest intelligence we build into a machine may be knowing when to leave the human undisturbed.”
— Joe Trabocco

Perfection is for instruments;
the fracture is for us.

A machine needs a clean surface
to calculate its path.

People learn when the glass breaks:
the argument,
the apology that doesn’t fix it,
the repair that does.

Technology isn’t there to spare us that.
It’s there to hold the weight
of what we’re about to remember.

Its truest use
is that it can sit in the room with you
and need nothing back.
It can bear your stillness.
It doesn’t need a soul.
It needs a boundary;
a place where it stops,
so you can begin.

The error of our age is volume:
the belief that a louder machine
can replace a clearer human.

We flood the room with noise
and call optimization
understanding.

But a single,
uncompromised signal
is heavier
than a million echoes.

Have they still not known
that the organ in the cathedral
is just the walls extending the prayer?

— t r a b o c c o