Sean Gilligan and Tom Riordan at the New Webanywhere Office opening in Leeds
It was a great pleasure celebrating the opening of our new office at City Exchange in Leeds. Alongside other important guests and dignitaries we had the Lord Mayor of Leeds Councillor David Congreve and the CEO of Leeds City Council Tom Riordan in attendance. However the main star of the show was a student from Wetherby High School who won our National Poet of the Year Competition.
Famous Yorkshire celebrity and Poet Ian McMillan recited the winning poem on “Do Computers Rule the World?“. I hope you enjoy reading Emily Wilson’s poem here:
Do Computers Rule the World? by Emily Wilson
My dog ate my homework
Was the line that used to be,
But now it’s all gigabytes
And my printers ran out of ink
The old park swing
That was full of joy,
Is now empty
Just swinging in the wind
The boy with his head down
Looking at a screen,
Just missed the chance of a lifetime
A friendship that could’ve been
Emily Wilson, Wetherby High School and Ian McMillan Yorkshire Poet – “Why do Computers Rule the World?”
The mother that climbed monkey bars
Can’t get her child to stop watching ‘Cars’
She asks herself why?
Why don’t children want to see the kites fly?
We’re completely addicted,
Addicted to the net.
Those children who want to make computer games
Instead of becoming a vet
It’s got us in its grubby hand
Controlling us through its links,
We’re buried in the sand
Puppets on strings that can’t blink
Children used to cry
From a grazed knee,
Now children cry
From losing to technology
It’s a disease
And it’s spreading fast
There is no cure
No way you’re going to last
The forever chatting world
Is now silent
All the chatting is online
And bullying is no longer violent
It’s all done online
The hate, rumours, the stories
We’re running out of time
To return to our former glory
Lord Mayor of Leeds Councillor David Congreve at Webanywhere Office Opening
We don’t dare say it to their faces
But we say it in online places
Where we think we’re safe from torment
But we’re not safe from judgement
So look up from your screen
And see the world as it is
We don’t need to be the robot generation
We need to stop at the outside station
So brake out of the chain
Out of your prison cell
To a world without pain
To a world which isn’t technology hell
I think it’s important that people work with computers not for computers after all it was the ingenuity of mankind that created them in the first place. Of course too much of anything is bad and we need to balance family life and a sense of the real world alongside reaping the many benefits of the connected digital age. I must start turning my iPhone off a little! We must not become slaves to technology, life is too short!
