From Krista Tippett’s interview with poet Marie Howe On Being, Original Air Date: April 25, 2013

Ms. Howe:

It’s just different. And one of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky, who’s a Russian poet, wonderful, amazing poet, who was exiled from the Soviet Union for being a poet. And he said look, he said, “You Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.” And I was thinking the machines — what face do you look into more than any other face in your life? The face of my iPhone.

Ms. Tippett:

Your screen. Yeah.

Ms. Howe:

My screen. I gaze into that face. I do what it tells me to do. If aliens came down and saw us all walking around, what would we do? All of us are walking around…

Ms. Tippett:

[laughs] Who do they obey?

Ms. Howe:

…looking into the — “Oh, they serve these machines.” I mean, the machines rule us. I have no will when it comes to my machines, to the computer, hours doing emails. I never applied for that job. What happened? It happened in 10 years, 15 years. They rule. It’s different from what we expected.