Monopolizing the cloud

Simon, a laid off software engineer, takes to writing poetry.

...

Simon: Listen!

I jostled with the laid-off crowd

Exiting the company gate,

Then all at once I saw the cloud

Smugly smiling, we’re all too late.

 Rajiv: Sounds familiar…

 Simon: A reworking of... I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils...

Rajiv: The original sounds more, what, timeless? What’s it all mean?

 

Simon: The cloud is a metaphor.

 

Rajiv: For?

 

Simon: For the Internet. For the Internet being taken over by some entrepreneur. Mega-entrepreneur.

...

John McCain and the Internet

Public meeting, John McCain takes questions from the audience.

...
Lawrence in the audience: Senator McCain, do you have any policy on ICT matters?

McCain: Sorry, I didn't catch that, my hearing, you see what?

Lawrence in the audience (louder with sign language): Do you go online?

McCain (aside to adviser): What's online?

Adviser: The Internet.

McCain: Oh, sorry, yes. See what you mean. Ha, ha. Good one. Yes, I am aware of the Internet.
...

Cats on FaceBook

Two middle-aged cats, Jemima and Lolita, are discussing behavior of the younger generation.

...

Jemima: You know, my daughter, Jessica, told me she communicates with her friend by Internet.

Lolita: She can type?

Jemima: Oh no. Her owner, sorry, her pet human, types a message to her friend who says “Tell your cat, my cat Jessica says hi.”

Lolita: Don’t tell me. Then her friend’s cat sends a message back through her pet human.

Jemima: A shifted reality? We meet here on the street, talk face to face, communicate blink to blink. Humans type messages to each other over the Internet and sometimes meet. But modern cats locked up in apartments get second-hand messages through humans over the Internet and never meet.

Lolita: Matrix? They're not aware of a parallel universe?

...

Dieting by diversion

Janet and Gladys are in a meeting. Both sometimes worry about getting overweight. Janet shows Gladys the story about Nancy Makin.

...

Janet: Did you see this article about the woman who lost weight without even trying? Went down from 500 pounds to 170?

Gladys: I saw the story yesterday. And didn’t go outside for twelve years!

Janet: And then got help by chatting anonymously online.

Gladys: So the Internet helped. People communicated with her because of what she wrote, not because of what she looked like.

Janet: The bit I liked was that as a result she didn’t diet, or have surgery, or take medication to slim down. She did something else and she forgot about binge eating.

Gladys: Like the best way to get what you want is to help someone else get what they want.

Janet: Not quite the same. Maybe a closer analogy is to get better at another language by studying something else in that language.

...