An ode to Walter Cronkite:
Gigabyte blues, I caught the Internet flu
Right here, on my computer.
I’m drowning in digits and analog widgets,
Quantum computing just gives me fidgets!
Answers in an instant, too good to be true —
Just a million links for me to review!
Oh where is Walter Cronkite to package the news?
Pass me a bowl of that Internet stew.
We’re dancing in the giga-gulch,
With terabytes of search results
We’ve all got the webby world blues.
Internet flu, you’ve got the bug, it’s true.
Search anything — you can choose!
But who said what, about which, to who?
C’mon, really, who wrote this spew?
Walter was our Reality Wiz,
He always said “that’s the way it is!”
Where is our Cronkite to civilize the news?
Just pass me a glass of that Internet goo.
I’m in a data trance,
The modern data dance,
I’ve got the gigabyte blues.
Our brains weren’t built for this kind of deluge.
We’re overwhelmed, overheated;
Under-filtered, un-deleted.
We need an editor to tell us what’s true.
What Cronkite reported at six was official,
Not a concern about Intelligence Artificial.
What Walter said was clearly the truth,
Not some al-go-ri-thm with attitude!
We’re stumbling in the data storm,
The information swarm,
We’ve all got the gigabyte blues.
Karen Muriello
Oak Park