The Search Engine Lament

Woe to humanity! Conversation is fallen! Mighty were its walls— as a storm smothers sunlight so the siege darkened our speech and mounted in gusting winds

Woe to the dinner table! For I was young in my days when the army amassed on the seams of sky and land— in a rush and in a charge they surged with flashing, bright colors from an Ethernet port bombarding us with advertisers’ catchy jingles and snappy slogans! Mourn for the guests dining on rich meats! We the wretches weep. Weep for the host whose event isn’t a twenty-four-seven broadcast— live streamed and fed on ranting comments, bolstered by memes and emojis— and whose décor isn’t researched, teased out in a tl;dr and expounded upon by a ninety-nine cent game.

Woe to the stories! Suppressed by the blockade of a thousand fact-checking databases, shielded behind an impenetrable glass screen, ridiculed and judged for the lack of breadth shoved up against scoffing, murmurs, and “but did you knows” Is a screen a new world? Or is the screen a mirror which has imprisoned our gaping imagination? Even still are we now bounded, captured within its pixelated limits? Woe to the one caught in the trap!

Woe to the Listener! For discussion has drowned! The debate cannot swim! From the surface we gauge the depth     and cast our skipping stones     with snorkels we observe the seafloor     we do not seek the depths When will philosophy and the spiritual     be more than whitespace erased by wikis? Are eraser streaks all that remain? Can man not wonder anymore? When will our thoughts return back to the skies above? When our ideas should levitate to the skies above,     dialogues are anchored to ocean trenches in currents of facts;     the adherents engulfed in blue fog speckled with hyperlinks     and for those who might escape,      the undertow rises and sucks them into the wireless vortex There, above, the sun and the stars shine     somewhere behind the waves, though we surf from cloud to cloud,     through and beyond the expanse cumulonimbus drifts beyond our reach.

Woe to us, for it is not. Woe to the dreamers and imagination vagabonds! Woe to the believers and the debaters!     Their tongues salivating, drunk on the aroma of wonder-lust,     whose starvation goes unquenched for their hosts with tidbits bestow     ten things about banalities you don’t need to know. Gone are days of common men! Forgotten are days of wisdom! Lost is the wonder of conversation sung in gallant halls!     Leave your fork! Drop your spoon!     Turn in your bowl! there are only packets and bytes now. Though we look for water, we will thirst. Look for food and you shall hunger.