Listening Post: The smart phone that ate the world
First it ate the telephone and telephone wires
then all the clocks and all their ticking.
It sucked in the printing presses and
the logging trucks that kept them fed.
The tape recorder and the answering machine,
the typewriters which are no more.
The radio, movie theaters and TVs,
even the remote–the telegraph
and the post office have both fallen in.
It ate the library and the bookstore,
and the living room bookcases,
the stereo and the record store,
and my nine feet of vinyl LPs.
The cartographer, the atlas,
and the gazette–all tamped down in.
The social clubs, the stadium
the notebook and the pen,
Large stuff and small stuff,
all stuffed in.
The camera and the photo album,
the wallet and the little black book.
All the computers and monitors,
keyboards, cables and mice. The calculator
and the shopping cart. The weatherman
is inside it, and the anchorman.
All the board games, casinos,
puzzles, toys. The fitness center,
the coach, the tutor, the translator.
All the stuffing has been removed
from all my stuff, leaving just this
dense rounded rectangle in my pocket.
Tags: listeningpost
Perfect! Had to share with all my reluctant smartphone carrying friends…as well as those who have embraced it from the beginning! Now if I could only figure out how to use more than half the stuff on it so I could be smart too! 🙂
Almost too real! That’s why I don’t have one. I’d miss turning the pages in my Atlas.
Wow! Dale, this has to go in your NEXT book! I want to read this aloud in the park!
Perfect
So true! Love this!
So scary and so true. I had to copy it to show my family and friends that don’t see this otherwise. Excellent.
Love it!
Good poem but my smart phone hasn’t eat anything because I don’t have one, don’t want one and don’t need one.
I like my land line, sometimes but not always, and simply do not want to be connected when not at home.
To me, to put it as simply as possible, all cell phones are rude.
My smart phone replaces in one portable device the following devices I formerly had to carry separately: flashlight, camera, world clock, check book, radio, calculator, compass, countless maps, newspaper sports score page, calendar/agenda, scratch pad, book of contacts, Yellow Pages, newspaper movie page, voice recorder, books, newspapers, multiple board games, train timetable, newspaper weather page, Entertainment book. Oh yea, and probably the least used device on many cell phones: the telephone. As someone without a car who has to carry everything in a backpack, this portability has been amazing.
Yes, Flatlanders love it. Us folks in the mountains, where you have to go up the hill in back, around the fallen oak tree, across the crick and climb the scraggly pine to get a signal, are not so keen about it.
True and somewhat scary in many ways…but they aren’t much help in areas of Northern New York where there still isn’t any or reliable cell and internet service. Also still pondering reference to logging trucks.
Much truth in that poem, Dale. At the same time, I still have some of the things “consumed”..like books and their lovely bookcases, maps and atlases, photo albums. I know in a few more years they could go the way of the dodo..something to gawk at in a museum of “olden days”, but for now I choose to hang on to them.
I also have a question that came to mind in regards to the length of the list…if all those things have been replaced, why do most people still have too much “stuff”? Have the valuable things in the poem been replaced by items far less important?
The poem also reminds me of the work of Shel Silverstein, without the humor….thanks for sharing!
On re-reading..the irony comes through, with a hint of wryness. I shared on FB, because my family is so attached to their phones. In that one function, I find appeal, since the family lives on 2 coasts. Being able to see , hear and talk with the Californians is a marvel and wonder that previous generations would have traded pen and paper for in a heartbeat.
Dale, Sat. Aug. 10, 2013
Right ON! We are living in a technological world so different than our parents’ and grandparents’. Similarly, our children and grandchildren will not recognize our present technology. Sometimes for good, sometimes not good, and other times potential for evil and waste. We must choose wisely.
Nick
Tried carrying a trac phone for awhile ,after checking it constantly for a few days to make sure I hadn’t missed anything or any calls I gave it up ,been 4 yrs. free now and don’t rightly know if I missed anything . But have found I can get by with out all this smart stuff I’ve been without.