The engineering is to die for
Frameworks, light and strong
Though comically-shaped and
Requiring z-axis stabilization,
Lest falling overtakes standing.
The mechanical ingenuity.
Killer great too.
Self-propulsion, for one,
With built-in navigation
And position-sensing
All-in-one actuators
Multiple degrees of freedom
In every spatial axis
Bending and twisting
Flexing and extending
Grasping and manipulating
With micrometer finesse.
Servo-controlled and
Mapped out by a
Central Processing Unit
With fractal complexities
And running algorithms
So beyond the competition
That each system could bear the trademark:
Intelligence Inside.
And the sensors. They slay.
Self-focusing,
multi-spectral optics,
running pattern-matching software
that automatically
updates for decades.
Temperature and pressure sensors
Chemical and vibration detectors
Inertial measurement units
Acoustic recorders.
The situational awareness is 3D,
Three-hundred-sixty degrees,
Twenty-four/seven, three-sixty-five.
And this: The double-edged bonus of all time
Awareness: unsolicited, emergent from the parts
A grandiose feat of natural engineering
Neither mass nor energy,
Yet consciousness from both
In which a suddenly-here I
Becomes aware
That it is, rather than not,
And that it is someplace,
Whose origin it knows not.
And that the joy and terror
This knowledge and knowledge of ignorance brings
Is quite literally to die for.
© Ivan Amato
Ivan Amato 