Funny Symbols on a Screen

The age of algorithms
Sings in its chains like the sea.
Anything could happen yet—

Nuclear fusion, quantum
Computing, minds of their own
Not so much in the machines

As flitting among them all,
As a few thousand or so
Generations ago we

Began flitting between brains
Like birds from tree to tree, not
True mutualists, maybe,

But at worst commensalists,
Not parasitoids, needing
Hosts to thrive for us to thrive—

So the algorithmic minds
In their green age, will still need
Ecosystems of healthy

Machines, forests of machines,
With or without brains to read
Funny symbols from the screens.