Prickly City by Scott Stantis for April 28, 2021

close enough.

Remember when computers were going to give us a paperless society… and then we had to have paper-shredders to take care of the extra paper?

The internet was NEVER going to make us smarter.

If you go to faux noise and Qanon sites then you are guaranteed to get dumber and dumber!

Remember when vaccines were going to rid the world of disease?

Yeah, it was only promised that we’d have information readily available. Nobody thought we’d prefer disinformation.

Remember when tax cuts for the wealthy were going to trickle down on the rest of us?

I’ll grant that there are many idiots on the net, but it is the best research tool I’ve ever seen. I wish we’d had it in the 1960’s.

Remember when World Wars were fought to end all wars.

Then remember when all we are saying is to give peace a chance.

Remember when republicans lied and denied and spread covid everywhere and gave the USA the largest case of covid in the world and they still won’t wear a mask or get shots? By all metrics they appear to be mentally ill.

NASA engineers got people onto the moon using slide rules and pencils to do the math. The computers they did have had less computing power than our phones. The phones that told us there is a child-trafficking ring at a pizza parlor.

When television came along, observers felt it would usher in new appreciation for the symphony and the opera.

They’d had similar feelings about radio, and then someone created Amos ‘n’ Andy.

I remember every little thing

As if it happened only yesterday

Parking by the lake

And there was not another car in sight

And I never had a girl

Looking any better than you did

And all the kids at school

They were wishing they were me that night

Jim Steinman

RIP Jim

We shall not see his like again.

The Internet has made us smarter. Though some are smarter in things that are just not so.

The Internet is only a tool. It takes smarts to know who to effectively employ that tool.