As fairies for the Irish or leeks for Welsh,
it’s the secret lives of small hidden machines,
their junctures, and networks that inspire me:
Mystic hidden functionaries that make
our made world live, brave little servo motors,
whose couplers, whose eccentric fire-filled
sensors are encased in bakelite with brass
screws, who stare with red eyes, who gauge moisture,
who notice tiny motions and respond,
whose cooling fans call out in white-noise
registers like older folk singers–I can
almost hear their earlier songs, their strong voices
now yelps, their thumps, their throbs, their hum, their chant–,
they click, they whir, they are sent spinning
inside like teen girls giggling over boy bands.
Most of all: ones waiting silently, concealing
the surprise of their purpose, tasks not yet known,
their true natures found only in connections.
Those that listen, those that speak,
those that control cool and heat,
those that open doors, those that lock
all the things that we’ve forgot,
those that hide, those that disclose
those embedded in our clothes
those in our ears, those in our hearts
those that bring together, those a part
of divisions, those like birds,
like parrots that complete our words,
those like fish, those that entrap,
those that free, those that freely flap
in fierce winds, those that replace
what we have lost, those that see
at night, in fog, in brightness, in fear,
those that show what we hold dear,
those that tempt, those that repel,
those that buy and those that sell,
those that keep us alive, those that
don’t, won’t, couldn’t and cannot.
Parts of one mind, not mine, blunt orchestra
of information, bundles of feelers
reaching out to touch us, teach us, guide us
to form better futures better understood.
May your sounds, your chimes, your silence calm us.
May your tender tendrils touch what we seek.
Small parts becoming one being intertwined,
a world in itself, remind us to be kind.
The post “Ode to Very Small Devices” by Paul Jones was published on 01/30/2026 by spectrum.ieee.org