The Information Age is All the Rage

At the cusp of the dawn of this new and brave Information Age...

You must forgive my opening, but to start essays like that has become all the rage.

Yes, consider the simple word “information”.

It's become a sensation.

If you were to ask me for a cause, I'd have to ask, how do you know where the restaurant you are going to tonight is located, or when King James VI became the 1^st of England, or even why we haven't gotten through winter yet?

You know because of the Internet.

There was a time when these things were not, and I know, because I was part of the liminal generation

Which naively held books in veneration.

(I imagine my case is something like the fellow who was 8 years old when they invented the wheel

Or the last guy to have an iron sword made the night before they began the Age of Steel.)

How about a small digital History lesson?

The Internet was born when some government types hooked up some state-of-the-art machines called computers for national security; and only gradually did it become a way to download digital delicatessen.

But how do we know it has fully infiltrated our day-to-day media?

I looked up all the preceding facts on Wikipedia.

You can't be part of the modern-western bubble

Unless you've got a digital double.

You might as well be confined

Unless you're onlined.

Is literacy dead? “In the beginning was word”, but can we still find the logos here?

Yes. All over the blogosphere!

People are still reading, albeit, none of the classics...

Still, I'm sure they are at least reading more than our ancestors in the Jurassics.

And they get stuff easier and more efficiently too.

If they want it, all they need to do is to wish it, they do!

At the click of the mouse

They can order a house.

With the press of a button

They can dine on beefsteak, chicken, or mutton.

You may marvel with wonder at the genies and magic lamps of Scheherezade

But my friends, the Internet is where-it's-ade.

Nowadays I need downloading at high speeds

To gets what I needs.

I'll admit that I've become addicted

(And I'm sure some people would call me afflicted).

But for my part, to quote Shakespeare, now 'tis no discontented winter yet,

So long as I've got my Internet.