is there going to be a time
sometime
soon
where we look at all this newfangled technology
as so tragically
backwoods
backwards
and slow

it’s gotta be
it’s gonna happen
that’s just the way of the world

but i want to know if there was ever a time
where we looked upon the new thing
sometime
later
and felt it wasn’t as great a thing
as it was originally made out to be

there have always been
moral panics about
well, anything and everything really

when people read books too much
they weren’t paying attention
to life
and living

when people spent too much time on the phone
the connection was cheapened

music
is against
godliness

etc

etc

etc

but i feel so many people my age
are looking at the internet
not as bringing something that haunts us as a hysteria
but bringing with it actual
worse
life
living

[and it is those of us who were there in the digital trenches,
who thought the internet was the dawn of a
great new age,
who extolled the powers of social media
for keeping us in contact with people
we very likely would have lost touch with,

we are the ones having doubts
second guessing our own excitement.]

[i feel like the only comparable moment would be
a failed city/state
with a governmental system
that didn’t do
what it said it would]

[but then, wouldn’t those who wanted it
dig their heels in
harder
as the numbers and examples and proof
overwhelmed the senses;
haven’t people always clung harder to the “facts”
that are provably
wrong
with
every
moment
of
proof?]

so what age are we in?

or am i in the minority
as i sit here, annoyed with and worried about
ai
and the state of the internet in general?

but believe me when i say
i do not
want to go back to a “simpler time”

moving forward is good

often technology is great

it is the shareholders and capitalism and consumerism that’s making these things
so terrible
upon release
and as they
continue to
exist

[the vulture class just gives a bad name
to vultures]