Michael's Corner

Daily writing prompt

Do you remember life before the internet?

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I’m a young boomer, age sixty-three, which means I’ve lived half my life with a world wide web and half without. Back in its infancy, the once nifty new space called an internet was dubbed “The great information highway.” Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: information became the new currency. “Information as currency” hastened a world that encouraged leaders to become influencers. If there was ever a genie that should have remained imprisoned in a bottle it was that one. Genies at-large tend to run amok, and this Faustian Djinn has transformed us into digital avatars interfacing with managed reality. We can hope our thoughts are our own; but can any of us be sure our brain’s amygdala is any match for algorithms?

Anyway, I’ll liken the internet to how an old vaudevillian once grumbled about the opposite sex: “Women; you can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.”