Ben's Songs

Zoe's original song tells the story of a set of heirloom crystal glasses that become fewer in number but dearer to memory as time passes. In software development, classes (modules of code) can also break if they are not carefully looked after over time — although, especially in a large enterprise, their number is more likely to increase than to decrease. The term "tech debt" refers to the ongoing cost of keeping code up-to-date even when it isn't actively being worked on or even used.

The guitar work here is my best attempt to capture the feel of what Zoe is doing in some alternate tuning, some of the chords are mostly conjecture.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Elegy (Crystal Glass)" by Zoe Mulford

 

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Generative AI has made a big splash in the past year. I think it's practically impossible that this kind of AI will lead directly to "the Singularity" or other AI doomsday scenarios — it's just not that good at multi-step practical reasoning, for one thing — but that doesn't mean it won't be disruptive or dangerous. In particular, we can expect to see a lot more of one thing the new AIs are very good at generating — bullshit.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Batya Wittenberg's Creatures of Dream is a haunting rap ballad about Dream, Faery, and the power of Fantasy.  Scheme is a simplified dialect of the LISP programming language, often used in academic settings (at least back when I was in school).  The idea for this parody did come to me just because of the sound of the refrain, but to do it justice I wanted to capture not just the facts about Scheme but my own very real sense of computer programming as a kind of magical gift.

Batya and I have now each parodied the other's best song, but I think her parody of mine isn't posted yet.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Creatures of Dream" by Batya Wittenberg

ttto: "Hearthfire" by Ada Palmer

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People aren't the only things that turn 64 — computers do too. Will my old software still run on a 64-bit OS?

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "When I'm Sixty-Four" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

 

by Benjamin Newman

after "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan

 

 

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "How Can I Keep from Singing?" by Anne Warner and Rev. R. Lowry

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lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Collars" by Michelle Dockrey

A hymn to the Goddess as experienced by a computer programmer, through all Her aspects — Maiden, Initiatrix, Mother, and Crone.

(This song has been updated — while the Goddess is still addressed in feminine terms, unnecessary gendering of humans in the story has been factored out.)

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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