“Networking”

Facebook is a fascinating phenomenon

along with all its equivalents:

Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr,

even WordPress and Blogspot.

All these so-called social networks

which allow you to build a self,

carefully constructed with text

to share with other shadow people

wandering a digital landscape,

plugged into a personalised news feed.

 

It’s a little worrying, I think,

how lost we can get in

so vast a web of words,

how Whatsapp and Viber

have overtaken our ability

to communicate face-to-face

while Facebook reminds us to

bid half-hearted happy birthdays

to people we barely talk to.

 

Us youth, digital natives of the net

with technology in our pockets

that transcends time and distance,

generation of iPhone therefore I am,

who will have our very sight

connected to the world wide web

through small contact lenses.

What will we make of all the

shadow people, ideal projections

and shallow internet chatter?

 

We can so easily drown in

such a flood of fluid networks,

but the ability the net provides

to learn and link to others has

set off an exponential explosion

in the ways we can now share.

It’s no mistake that we call a

conversation with links a ‘thread’:

a small piece of the tapestry

we weave with digital fingers.

 

There is freedom to weave as

you please and, if done well,

we can find the occasional

golden thread where we would

never have thought to look for it,

be it in a flamenco song or,

nerdy as it might make me,

a simply brilliant maths proof,

both reminders of the beauty

to be found in everything.

 

Im gonna make those

last few lines my status.

l8r 🙂