Back in my day there were no planes. We swam across capricious oceans and choked on wicked winds. The cities smelled of persimmons which, when tossed into the air, would pop before your eyes.
Today the great metal birds circumnavigate our world. Lovely, complex little machines, always skipping in and out of time, enslave the attentions that board games once captivated. And the cities—the cities are not made of ink and paper. Now the cities now swell with gigabytes and reward impatience. Corpulent cities brimming with ideas all imprisoned in that dreadful place between zero and one. Technological innovation infects the heart of the modern mind until the words festering on every tongue evolve to ‘1080p’.
But listen, we were talking about back in my day—not your day, my day. Back in my day the written word was written. The letters fell right out of your fingernails and sailed the ocean before the recipient received a reply.
Today we drum out our thoughts on beaten plastic squares in manufactured letters and patience. Your paper words are just as heavy as mine. Connected by unyielding chains of Wi-Fi, the lack of personal human connectivity calculates an ever-expanding abyss between what is and what was. Words are no longer whispered straight into another’s mouth but are sent between shy users in boxes for skeletal communication.
Back in my day war was a sloth that carefully crept the length of the battlefield. Bullets hung there, in the air, and halcyon children sprinted out onto the battlefield with jam jars to up the shells while the soldiers ate grapes out of wicker baskets and debated the incendiary nature of war.
Today, thousands are doomed with the press of a button. The digital era has sped up the process of death. Your idea of war is only dream, while the wars today create monsters you could not contain in your wildest reveries. The old day that once stood tall folded into paper cranes and crumbled with the invocation of silver screens. Our technological dreams guzzle creativity as fuel and each day the dreams grow wilder. Can we not agree that we all fantasized about impossibilities until we witnessed them firsthand? Were not all realities just dreams brought to life?