The Super Highway

Will future ages say of us
we were a new line of descent:
Arachnid Man who blanketed
the world in wonder webs?
If so, no wonder, they might think,
the world became so heated underneath!

Or will they call us Link Age Man,
and realise that all those threads
were Fred and Ethel, Jim and Beryl
trying to connect?

Ours is the Age of Connectivity --
and not of information, as we're taught.
Connecting has for ages
been what's super cool --
it does not matter much with what, to whom:
the globe is but a super room
where we can chat our stuff...
But you think not?

Well, things are changing slowly, so I hear...
the super-highway has been mugged,
become a tad less info' and touch 
more Hi ya Pal! --  With very little info'
kicked around... raw information
isn't what the kids are all about.

The web, some say, does for society
what our connective tissue does for us:
it binds, supports and keeps apart 
the body parts that otherwise would jar.
If we should lose the internet --
by some default of use, let's say -- society
would suffer all those stiff and painful joints.

Yet I was reading only yesterday
how youthful sections of the global population
now think the web is naff.
It's a Dad Thing, they will say.
Or worse: A Wrinkly Thing -- of course,
they still connect, web-wise, in other ways!

But if the Not Cool label sticks,
if others take it up,
the viewpoint spreads,
the web might just become
man's last big thing --
Perhaps we'll end up as the End Time Man!

..............................................
It is twenty years since the first text was sent.