tam Dei quam diaboli, a machina... 2020
(both of God and of the devil, from the machine)

.....I thought I could explain this piece as soon as it was finished but that was very wishful thinking. I'm finding it impossible to disentangle all the extraordinary influences that went into it during the year so far (2020) in what surely will end up being one of the weirdest years in living memory. I knew as I started working on it that current events began morphing it into something much more complex. Yet even the monumental forces and challenges that have already changed so much this year, will be nothing compared to what I imagine is coming - the next round in the battle of the Mega-Tech companies – they're only just gearing up...

.....So a quick explanation for now, is my attempt to adapt this famous piece of prose by John Donne.

.....No Tech is an Island
with apologies to John Donne - English poet (1624 prose work)

No Tech is an island entire of itself;
every Tech is a piece of the construction,
a part of the framework;
if a start-up company be snatched away by the market,
society is the less, as well as if a multi-national were,
as well as any manner of thy research departments
or if thine own project developments were;
any Tech's expropriation diminishes potential,
because progression involves the whole of mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

. Meditation . 10001
Devotions upon Emergent Technologies
A Different Aspect
with further apologies to John Donne ....