ALOHA PROMISES FOREVER

In this age of global interconnection, we face a modern paradox.  At the same time that we are more connected than ever, we are also increasingly polarized and alienated from one another.  What might have been and can still be redirected into a force to instill solid communications to help in combatting tyranny and overcoming various issues and concerns has had unintended consequences as well.  Too many screen time has created a new way of making friends but also fostered a sense of me’ism that is strikingly disconnected and narcissistic to the nth degree.

Social media has come to recognize these concerns as legitimate and attempting to counter this at least to some degree by encouraging others to know folks not just by their opinions but the things that they are interested in and drive their day to day lives.  They are also increasingly concerned with ‘time well spent’ including trying to balance profit by having consumers constantly connected, but, also involved in their local communities offline.  Time will tell how this all works out.

Time Well Spent
by Michael Romani

It is said to live life happily
One best does this in a community
In these incipient internet days
We live more isolated in a thousand ways

But, Facebook and Google sensing this is wrong
Have begun building up ways people can belong
Even if questionably limiting free speech
In other ways, they've put this in better reach

Algorithms offer their madcap disorientation
And some attempts have led to greater polarization
But the alternatives of time well spent
Are offered up again and again until we relent

Learning each other goes beyond our mere opinions
Peeled layer by layer like virtual onions
Finding once again that we have more in common than not
And that finding this out is just something we've forgot

Now those who led us off into the disconnected ether
Are same those leading us back face to face like gatekeepers
Back into the embrace of the waiting arms of prolific dialog
And away from the ongoing strands of unidirectional monologue

The coming days will prove to be most informative
To find if social networking becomes truly transformative
Will profit motives give way to friends and family
And in so doing, begin to build a truly global community?

In the coming days of further Twitter Revolution
Wil the offline find the online's tool of communication
These within the global community of universal mind
Will need to make this tool into something more refined

Online and offline merge into a single augmented reality
It's there then that we'll find that conceptuality
As biometric sensors and interfaces crawl under our skins
We must come to terms with our constructs of humanity again

Within the next generation, both will assuredly become one
The merging of self to interface has already begun
It's this global imperative yet to define
That will be the strength of our dividing line

… And when we do we repent
                 ...Focused on time well spent
...Between not just what can we do
                 ...But in deciding the good of me and you....

(c) February 6, 2019   Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved