The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Even down here in the bucolic nettle fields of the pastoral South End, our laid back, porch-rocking, garden hoeing pace is definitely picking up speed.  More and more satellites are whizzing through all that space junk overhead to bring us faster weather reports, more TV channels, instant text messaging and close-up photos of the rocker on the porch from Google Earth we don’t have so much time to sit in anymore.  Our attention spans now aren’t long enough to make it through the Stanwoodopolis Weekly Gazette so we check Yahoo headlines on the computer that rockets in on DSL.  If you’re younger than 30, you never looked at a newspaper in your whole life.  Why bother, you can get the only news you’re really interested in on Facebook, what your ‘friends’ are doing, news enough, I guess, these days.

Our old shack has its share of 21st century gizmoes.  Microwave oven, digital telephone answering machine, ma’s nano-pod, two computers (his and hers) and all the peripherals right down to a podcast microphone.  We got lazerized CD players, DVD players, a remote controlled TV antenna, digital alarm clocks, electric guitars.  We look like the Jetsons without the robot maid.  And that’s on back order from Amazon….

This is all the stuff advertised as Time-Saving Devices back when.  Help do your chores more efficiently.  Give you leisure time galore.  Free you to live your dream.  Be your True Self, not a slave to the menial tasking days.  Right…
Maybe I’m too old and too cynical.  Maybe Facebook updating IS your true self.  Maybe bad TV IS the dream.  Maybe what we wanted all along was something to keep us busy, keep us constantly entertained, keep us from sitting too long on the rocker contemplating the front yard that needs mowing.  The world is smaller and definitely accelerating.  The question I got, rocking to an older rhythm, is what the hell was the point of saving time if everything got speeded up so fast all our free time is gone?  Well, I could waste more time on this, but I have to hurry up and update this blogsite.

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The great joy of living in the Information Age — or the Information Glut, more accurately — is that every news flash, gossip tidbit, sports score, you-name-it, comes at you via everything from your cellphone, laptop, tablet, TV or microchip in your head. Whether it’s faux news or viral rumor, well, who knows? Or these days, who cares?? The real point is that your time is full up, boredom is a thing of the past, information is flying at you at the speed of light … or a Trump tweet.

If you feel overwhelmed, welcome to the future. If you no longer have time to cook dinner, plant a garden, learn to play an instrument or read a book, you’re in good company. After all, this isn’t rural Iowa circa 1850. It’s the New Age. 21st Century. Modernity run amok. Remember when we were all ga-ga about those ‘Time-Saving Devices’? Copiers, computers, answering machines, cellphones, electric knives — all to free you up for more important stuff. Like Facebook. Instagram. E-bay shopping.

I know … sure beats the horrors of self-improvement or learning new hobbies or searching for wisdom and enlightenment. How many LIKES on your post? Easier than meditating or studying or practicing. The virtual world is your oyster now. Maybe not heaven or paradise, but it sure takes your mind off those for awhile and comes a close 2nd. Or 3rd.

Who needs a guru when you got Google? God is just an algorithm now, Plato’s a poor boob looking at shadows in a cave. So roll over Socrates, let Wikipedia give you the news. The news is as phony as a 4 dollar bill, most of it, and the time we ‘saved’, worth about the same. Artificial intelligence is right around the corner and by then we’ll gladly take any intelligence that’s offered. Just so we won’t have to do the thinking….

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