In Times of Sorrow and Fear is When Poets Appear

Ireland's greatest living poet 

and America's greatest ever Speaker

 

I. 

 

Irish poetry has a long and illustrious history. 

 

Whether written in Gaelic, in English, or formed within the complex interplay of these two languages and traditions, no one can deny that the bards of Ireland - both in their medieval and modern incarnations - have produced a body of work that is uniquely rich and worthy of admiration.   

 

Arguably, however, Irish poetry this week scaled new heights and we can now add the name of Bono to a roll call of honour that includes Swift, Wilde, Yeats, and Heaney ...

 

 

II. 

 

I know that his St. Patrick's Day poem for Ukraine has been much mocked and dubbed by some as the worst poem ever written - I even saw it described, shamefully, as a war crime in its own right, inflicting unnecessary suffering upon those who have had the misfortune to hear it. 

 

I find that shocking and I simply don't understand all the personal abuse and ridicule aimed at mega-rich rock superstar Bono, who is attempting to bring a message of peace and love to the world. But, as Taylor Swift once famously said, the haters gonna hate (hate, hate, hate, hate, hate) and it's up to the rest of us to rise above their animosity and shake off all negative vibes.

 

Bono's poem is a profoundly beautiful verse and I will be forever grateful to the first female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, for sharing it - in her own inimitable manner - during the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon, held at the White House earlier this week: click here. 

 

I didn't think I'd ever read lines more moving than those written by William McGonagall, recounting the terrible events of December 28th, 1879 (i.e., the Tay Bridge disaster in Dundee). But Bono has surpassed even this glorious verse with lines like these:

 

They struggle for us to be free 

From the psycho in our human family 

Ireland's sorrow and pain 

Is now the Ukraine 

And Saint Patrick's name now Zelenskyy.

 

Brilliant. 

 

Now send on the Riverdancers ...

 

 

 

Deepfake and the Triumph of Lying

Deepfakes generated from a single image by researchers at Samsung's AI lab in Moscow: 
Egor Zakharov / Aliaksandra Shysheya / Egor Burkov / Victor Lempitsky

For those who don't know, deepfake is a technique using artificial intelligence to synthesise reality.

Pre-existing sounds and images are combined or superimposed on one another in often humorous, sometimes malicious, always slightly uncanny new ways, creating extremely convincing new sounds and images that are, as Baudrillard would say, hyperreal (i.e., more real than real).

The technology that enables this, developed over the last twenty years or so, is increasingly sophisticated and the game has moved way beyond a few pervy nerds swapping homemade videos online in which the faces of celebrities such as Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, or Emma Watson are placed on the bodies of porn actresses.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are calls in the UK and US to criminalise the making and distribution of deepfake material; the real concern being fake news, rather than fake nudes, as politicians have also been subject to deepfake trickery. Some commentators fear this could have damaging (even dangerous) consequences, technology making it impossible for us to determine the truth of what we see and hear.*

On the other hand, fears about new technology have a long history and are often overstated. Perhaps deepfake will oblige us all to think a little more artistically and critically and not just assume the real as a pregiven or something fixed. And besides, hasn't life always unfolded within some kind of generative adversarial network and aren't the only real people ones who have never existed?

*Note: anyone who wants to give deepfake technology a go before it's banned, can download FakeApp, which allows for the creation of photorealistic face swapping videos, or open-source alternatives such as Faceswap.