False Positives
In reams and reams of screens,
Awash with electronic ink,
Modern life, it seems,
Can be too quick to make a link –
Bombarding us with helpfulness
That turns out to be bunk,
As we’re wading through a wealth of mess,
And oceans-worth of junk.
With teems of smart machines
Whose outputs only grow and grow,
Modern life, it seems,
Is just afraid to tell us “no”.
Is classification then simply an illusion,
Decisiveness drowning in doubt ?
Results are lost in too much inclusion,
And not enough filtering-out.
These aren’t people, we needn’t feel sorry,
They have no sentience –
We’re not some malevolent Tory
With deep cuts we must dispence.
We needn’t be stone-deaf to pleas,
For no pleas can be made.
These facts aren’t lonely refugees –
So why is our softwear swayed ?
We need our algorithms cruel
If they’re to be effective,
For what’s the point of a rule
If we won’t let it be selective ?
So we have to choose, it cannot be both these,
In our data refinery –
For we need no participation trophies
In the world of binary.
Yep, I just treated data as a mass-noun, and not a plural. The same way as every pedant would still treat news as not a plural.
Rhyming Couplets 