Borg
JOHN BENNETT
(originally sent out to Bennett’s email list — sign up below for more like it)
I was about to write, “Everyone has a secret life” when it occurred to me that it’s no longer true.
At an escalating rate, more and more people have no life at all, leave alone a secret life. At an escalating rate what people perceive as their lives is generated for them on Tweet, Twitter and Facebook, etc., generic and uniform. Their lives are being streamed.
Of course this isn’t true for everyone. There are some stubborn holdouts, people who don’t have a computer leave alone a smart phone, but eventually they will be eradicated.
I’m a subversive. I inject poison into cyberspace. I don’t Twitter, Tweet or do Facebook, none of that shit, but I do have a computer and I am on line. I have an email list of a few hundred names to which I send Shards and Short Jabs that get passed along, sometimes getting injected into cyberspace networks like a virus where they have the potential to awaken secret-life awareness, causing small waves to ripple thru the world-wide-web.
Proportionately and technologically speaking, this is the new millennium equivalent of what I did with a mimeograph machine back in the Sixties, a bolstering of humanity’s thin-as-a-communion-wafer hope for remaining human.
There are people who see remaining human as an impediment to progress – technology has been modifying them to see things this way for quite some time and has even given them a name.
They are the Borg.
SEE ALSO
The birth of road rageCapitalism on a deathbed, or: Jesus was an American
In the Prophetic Essence of Visionary Courage, John Bennett Challenges & Incites
Find John Bennett’s novels, short stories, and shards at Hcolom Press. You can contact him, or get on his Shards list at dasleben@fairpoint.net. Read a review of his novel Children of the Sun & Earth here
Plaudits, John–Keep turning the crank of your new age mimeo machine (I know you will). Your words ARE hitting the target, and I think every serious 21st century writer is going to have to follow your example. Like the milkman of our childhood (mine at least) we have to bring it to their door.
Like the milkman bringing sustenance to your door — that’s a great way to view Bennett’s shards being delivered to our email every day. Your words and stories hit the mark as well, Donald.