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Technology is Seduction

​by Ray Ogar, 2001

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technology is seduction,

like an edifice that warns off while

calling to you at the same time--

it seems something i’ve unwittingly inherited

from the life my father led in the military

and the reconnaissance my grandfather did

for the air force--

and yet i don’t consciously think of the

life i’ve come to live where casual radio signals

cradle me from day to day or

how the computer that sits on my desk sometimes

seems to have more attitude than my worst enemy.

sometimes years will pass before any clue of

personal family history will be dropped.

then dad says, “i worked on missile guidance systems during

the vietnam war--don’t tell anyone.”

grandfather says, “deep in an underground air hangar

the germans had row after row of dark machinery--

some were gutted like steel cattle, others were finely

wrought like tiny phallic tanks--these were the

precursor to the jet engine.”

i usually sit brooding at the dinner table during holidays.

and i seem to sit in the background,

my mind slack and dull

until some hasty scene from world war 2 is reported back

by my grandfather.

he lives it like yesterday.

and i do get excited.

finally he recalls how he used to trade cigarettes for sex

or how his team discovered a top secret german facility

just months before the war ended.

he says einstein would have been shocked.

and he probably was.

later, maybe in the backyard while smoking a cigarette,

dad refers to his past in the army as

if it were encased in ceramic.

delicate looking.

delicate to handle.

and fired to some semblance of security.

ceramic.

he does drop his own hints at times.

he’ll pull me aside near a rotted piece of fence.

it is then he provides me with background information.

a confidential moment perhaps.

he reports on older computers

and stale control surfaces that record and

catalog the details of missile activity

over certain countries that used to be colored red

on any world map.

were these war games i ask?

not necessarily.

and my brow wrinkles.

he remarks in a more than offhand manner on the

true existence of larger, more menacing machines

that seem to double all of our everyday movements.

but he laughs.

a little anxiety?

i can’t tell.

i laugh too.

and it’s then when walking into a room full

of computers that i sometimes hesitate and

realize that my father and grandfather were

there at the early stages of

technology evolving intelligently.

only now it alls seems background

noise until sometime tomorrow.