Wired Beauty

I was chatting on twitter with a few friends today about buzzwords we hate: paradigms, synergy, gamification and so on. Afterward, I somehow got stuck in my brain the beginning of a lovely poem, Pied Beauty, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which begins, "Glory be to God for dappled things" and celebrates the beauty in imperfection. With apologies to Hopkins, I update the poem for 2012.

Wired Beauty

 

GLORY be to God for disruptive tech— 

  For apps of couple-colour as a branded cow;    

    For data gleaned from chips upon trout that swim;     

For viral video of finches’ wings;              

Paradigms plotted and pieced—push, pivot and plug;            

    And all trades, their transactions well tracked.               

All things counter, original, spare, strange;          

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)              

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;    

All those things whose beauty is past change:           

                  Upgrade them.              

You should really read the original.