nature vs. technology

Brautigans poem, “All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace” explains to us the harm of technology. I think it does not become clear until the last stanza, where we are free of our labors. Being free or our labors is not what we all truly want. If none of us had some structure we could not enjoy the pleasurable things as much. He suggests we will all be ‘watched over by machine of loving grace’. I interpreted this in two ways. One, being taken over by this technology could end up killing the good in all of us. The machines of loving grace could be the technology machines trying to keep us alive, like the ones in the hospital. Ultimately if we all end up on the heart tracers, eventually we will all have a straight line. I also interpreted this as our lives simply being taken over by technology. We are becoming so consumed by it that we don’t enjoy the natural things. In each stanza he wants this world of cybernetic and nature to come sooner and sooner until eventually in the last stanza Brautigan believes ‘it had to be now’ and then it seems to all have fallen downhill from there. Maybe that sudden rush of technology was not good to be mixed with nature so quickly.

On the other hand, it appears that Brautigan could believe technology is what the world needs. In each stanza he implies that they need it as soon as possible, ‘and the sooner the better!’ or ‘right now, please!. He also compares mammals and computers in a world together as being ‘like pure water touching clear sky.’ That was convincing to me that Brautigan believes these two things can live in a world peacefully.

“All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace” is a poem about irony, or so I believe. On the outside it appears to be dashing towards technology, but really if torn apart and thought more about it is about the world being anti-technology. Brautigan, writing this poem almost seven decades ago, would have only wished to see the technology we all have now like the iphone or the wii. At the same time I think he would have been the same kind of person my grandfather is, telling me every time he see’s me about how he never had what I had when he was a child and instead of play on the computer they used to fish or bike and he never had too communicate with his friends as much, but still he had the same great relationships that I have. The last two stanzas, and all watched over by machines of loving grace, convinced me that this poem was about anti-technology because it finalized the end result and our lives have ended up being ‘watched’ or taken over by these machines. Looks like Brautigan was right.