LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
f course, what we’re supposed to wish for is “Peace on earth, good will to men.” But that’s asking a lot. Requesting a footprint of the American chicken flipping-the-bird+1 absolute end to global conflict and a complete and total change in human nature is pressing our luck with Santa. It’s telling Mom and Dad that what we want in our stocking is not a pony but the King Ranch.
I’ll settle for a more modest gift of peace, as in a little peace and quiet, please. The modern world has become a very noisy place. This is not the old-fashioned pandemonium of clanging bells, shrieking factory whistles, rumbling freight trains, beeping car horns, and the roar of the crowd. Rather, it’s the noise in our heads – the quietly riotous clamor of digital connectivity. Nowadays we are all hearing disembodied voices and seeing things that aren’t there, the way crazy people do. The insanity is drummed into our heads by ubiquitous glowing screens and omnipresent pulsing devices. Every person, place, and thing on the planet now has the means to instantaneously get in direct contact with... me. I hate it. TMI! But that’s an over-generous acronym. Very little of the “Too Much Information” is informative or even has coherent form. The noise-to-signal ratio is too high. Any sense is lost in static. Fact, fancy, fantasy, fallacy, falsity – feh !
The Internet is the light shining out the devil’s butthole. A Google search is looking something up by sifting through the ashes of the Great Library of Alexandria after Julius Caesar burned it to the ground. E-mail is playing Post Office with ugly party guests you don’t want to kiss. Texting is the infinite number of monkeys on the infinite number of typewriters, but they can’t write the works of Shakespeare because of autocorrect. Twitter is a public toilet for your words. And when you post something on social media, you write your name and phone number on the toilet door. The insanity is drummed into our heads by ubiquitous glowing screens and omnipresent pulsing devices. “
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American Consequences 7
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