A river on a copper wire

I have discovered the wonder of intenet radio. I just sat there, tuning out and letting the machine carry my mind to wherever it so chose. How would I explain this to someone from yesteryear? How to recapitulate the seemingly chaotic but oddly linear progress of the transformation of society, to our mad saturation in all conceivable types of information? How do you make someone realize that sixty years ago, the best and brightest minds could not design a processor one millionth as powerful as what I'm sitting in front of now? How would those minds at their apex react to this device that I use in semi-ignorance?

Our minds have changed; our memory capacity is shiftng, being outsourced to silicon chips; our attention is looser, more rambling, more skittish. Our capacity for learning has not changed as far as I know, but the demands placed on us have. Will we continue in this fasion, ending up in an alienating dystopia of information saturation and general madness as images play on the backs of our eyelids as we sleep, or will the reactionaries triumph and humankind withdraw back to the cloistered churches with sheets over our eyes, bowed prostrate and prone to knee pain? Elaborately crafted sentences aside, I haven't the slightest clue where all "this" will go, but I'm content to let it feed my imagination fro a little while. God knows it is beset by the actual a little too much.

Consider: "the universe is an energy slide and we are all going down it. It would be easier if the purpose of our existence weren't to claw our way back to the top. To Mother and to the end of all stuggle."

If there were ever a time that I needed a walk, this would be it.