Apologies to Wordsworth

The internet is too much with us; now
Chatting and shopping and wasting our hours
Little we see that lays limits to powers
Our privacy given away, consumed, and how
The celebrity bares her bosom, cow
Eyes seductively promise she is ours,
Screens flickering in lonely office towers.
The connection cannot meaning endow,
It moves us not. Would it wiser be
To hold to Luddite values, take shelter
So that solitude would be less lonely,
Protected from society’s welter,
To less value being seen, but to see,
Links and stats and comments helter skelter.

Posted by Mara Collins on Jan 29, 2009 | 8 comments

8 Comments

  1. jenny
    Jan 30, 2009

    “The connection cannot meaning endow,
    It moves us not.”

    Boy, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it. Today I say it isn’t so – look what blogging has done for us, for starters. But other days… well, you’re preachin’ to the choir.

    How ’bout an Internet-free week? Not now, of course. You know, later. Like when we’re going to go sugar-free…

  2. Raven Zachary
    Jan 30, 2009

    Hey, watch it!

    :)

  3. unreliable narrator
    Jan 31, 2009

    Oh those smug sugar-free people. How I long to run past them waving an open bottle of organic white agave nectar tauntingly! ;o)

    That reminds me—I just got sucked into my feed reader and left my breakfast (plain yogurt with agave) sitting on the windowsill, where it’s been sitting, fermenting happily in the morning sun, since I got distracted, stripped and remade two beds, rearranged my office, hung up clean clothes from last weekend, and carted out several loads of dirty laundry to the front of the house. Oh, that’s right—it hasn’t always been just the Internet that distracts women! And William, thank God, had Dorothy to do the washing-up.

    PMS week, come to think of it, might be an ideal week for me to give up the Internet once a month….

  4. Patrick
    Jan 31, 2009

    “The Machine stops” comes to mind, and rewilding, not that I am for it, mind you, I think connection is a good thing, and all those people that tell you we need to live like our hunter gatherer forefathers seem a little at odds with their blogs and their twitters proclaiming such. Not that the machine is working so well right now either, perhaps a fine-tuning is in order, one that allows me to have my sugar and eat it too? (and not always tasting so damn much like corn!) Still when the breaks are out and the car is plummeting down the steep side of a mountain, it’s hard to say “don’t jump off just yet, I think we can get it working” to those who see opportunities to leap away at every corner…

  5. jenny
    Feb 1, 2009

    I was serious, man. I’m giving up sugar. Just not today…

  6. Mara Collins
    Feb 1, 2009

    I believe in giving up sugar, it’s just that giving sugar up has made Raven so much more patient and even that he can handle it when I crash off a sugar high, so now I don’t need to give it up!”

    And the only way I could give up the internet is if all of you did so that I wouldn’t be missing something important.

    Also, bringing in Rewilding? Makes me love you. And the irony that I can use the internet to go read The Machine Stops right now if I wish to.

  7. unreliable narrator
    Feb 3, 2009

    “The Machine Stops” = story I wanted to use from the beginning for End of the World class; only very recently rejected as not very interesting in terms of gender! The thing I love most about it: um, EM FORSTER?!?

  8. unreliable narrator
    Feb 3, 2009

    PS also I’m giving up sugar too! When, you ask? When they pry it from my cold, dead, post-apocalyptic fingers, that’s when. ;o)

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