Rage against Machines.

Power on.

A screen lights up.

Why get out of the house, or even her bed, when she has the world on her lap?
Good Morning.

Outside is inclement weather, traffic, stress. A hundred people with a hundred different demands. Outside: Bad. Inside: Good. In here, she can sit in her soft bed, with the A/C on, with a mug of coffee by her side, and watch the world unfold.

Windows popping up. MSN, oovoo, Facebook, Twitter.

Friends? They're all here, all of them. Who else does she need? She can talk to you, typing is talking, isn't it?
What? You want to hear her voice? Fine, then, she'll switch on the webcam, plug in the mic. Video conferencing is a wonder, isn't it?

Outside is limited. Stepping out of the house, she can only see so much. Just one city, just the rain, the trains, the same people everyday. The same language, same college, same routes. After a while, it gets old, doesn't it?
The world's on her lap, she's connected to everywhere and everyone, it's magical and wonderful and she doesn't have to move an inch. A few words typed in, a tap of the Enter key, and she can see geisha from Kyoto, and Valentino's fall line. Read newspapers from New York and London side by side. Watch movies that released internationally months ago, but still haven't come to her city. With a little patience, she can have her favourite TV shows without having to hunt for the remote.

So connected. She can access everyone, and everyone can access her. Even more, maybe, than if she actually went out. Isn't this so much better? So much less effort? Twitter, FourSquare, Facebook. What wonder. She knows what everyone's doing, even if they're a continent away. She has them tracked.

She hasn't been out of the bed in a week, there's a pile of dirty dishes on the floor and a pack of cookies by her side. She's gained 10 kilos in a month. She's smiling, the glow from the 13 inch screen illuminating her face. Her eyes ache....
She will power off only to sleep at night.

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A rather disturbing half-piece that came to me just before I woke up. (Yes, the dreams HAVE gone, for now. Joy.) It seemed much better then, as always, I should just have written it down.

I finally got a new laptop battery, and it doesn't seem to be working. The laptop doesn't boot, and when it does, it takes aaaaaaaaaages. It works just fine with the old battery, though. I'm a little disturbed that I liken this whole situation to a transplant, where the patient doesn't accept the transplanted organ, or something like that. Likening my laptop, in effect a machine, to a sentient being. Who can maybe hear me mentally, and sometimes loudly, curse and plead at it.

That's how the above bit came out, in a fit of anger today, I was grumbling at this generation's almost-dependance on...well, I suppose computers is a given, I guess...Facebook. The internet. Connectivity. I hear last week, many celebrated Quit Facebook day...though I don't think anyone I know actually did it. We're too scared of losing out, aren't we? Especially people like me, and so many others I know who've shifted cities and leave old friends behind...we live our lives, but FB's a boon to us, isn't it? We keep up, kind of.

It's rather sad, actually. And the most we'll do is deactivate our accounts for a while, and then get back on.

It's really quite tragic.

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Now Re-reading: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Now Feeling: Tired. I should sleep less. And write more. Like, physically. With pen and paper.