Too Much Information!

We recall the days of the old phone kiosk

Coloured red, with black hand-set inside

And if lucky, to our friends we could talk

With button A the connection supplied

If this failed to work – as was often the case

We pressed button B for our pennies

No contact was made – not even a trace

A pity we had no antennae!

With the passage of time the systems improved

And the STD network spread widely

The obstacles to traffic were easily removed

And call usage multiplied greatly

Soon the land-lines spread like a mighty cat’s cradle

Every household demanded a phone

All over the map and overseas using cable

The phone book soon listed each home

We had arrived at an age of instant connection

Trade and society flooded with data

Factoids spawned from every direction

And we welcomed it all, no matter

But the information age was really just starting

And the internet about to burst through

With mobile phones soon to get “smarting’

And broadband soon jumped the queue

So now Google, Facebook and Linked in too

Shrink the world, with all its great knowledge

In a click of a mouse, Wiki facts come straight through

And with Twitter who  needs uni or college?

But this marvellous age electronic

Brings with it problems and serious threats

 Even issues that can be quite chronic

Like how secure is the wonderful net?

Yet we rejoice in the marvellous progress

From Bell’s phone to this digital age

Such great advances  we’ll never repress

And with them we must fully engage

But perhaps we now suffer quite badly

From a great excess of information

And some of us would really gladly

Power down and find liberation!

Ken Fisher