Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Poem: "Ghost Towns and Tumbleweeds"

This is the freebie for the August 6, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from LJ user je_reviens.


"Ghost Towns and Tumbleweeds"


First it was DARPAnet,
the hot new packet-switching network,
expanding slowly from business to pleasure,
and then other networks emerged,
PLATO expounding in cyberspace,
and the migration began.

Usenet thrived for a time,
then fell prey to spammers;
people moved to Yahoo groups and beyond.

Social networks emerged,
Friendster and MySpace,
their echoing ranges
now nothing but
ghost towns and tumbleweeds.

Blog networks appeared,
LiveJournal and Dreamwidth,
Blogger and Xanga,
readers roving amongst them in droves.

Then came microblogging,
Facebook and Twitter,
Tumblr with its focus on photos,
life reduced to snippets and glimpses.

We are online nomads,
never settling for long in one locale,
always ready to pull up stakes
and head for the horizon

whenever the Next Great Thing beckons to us.
Tags: community, cyberfunded creativity, cyberspace theory, fishbowl, history, poem, poetry, reading, weblit, writing
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  • 5 comments
technoshaman

technoshaman

August 6 2013, 20:38:02 UTC 7 years ago

Truth! My new co-worker still frequents Slashdot, which was a blog before blogs were invented... I was shocked to see the thing still there and going...

Satisfying. :)
labelleizzy

labelleizzy

August 7 2013, 01:21:23 UTC 7 years ago

yes.

ysabetwordsmith

Thank you!

ysabetwordsmith

August 7 2013, 01:39:50 UTC 7 years ago

I'm glad you enjoyed this.

The fishbowl is still open if you want to leave prompts!
mdlbear

mdlbear

August 7 2013, 14:54:20 UTC 7 years ago

This reminds me very strongly of a usenet post titled "Nomads of the net". It seems to have vanished, alas!, but it described a bunch of digital nomads taking over an abandoned newsgroup (alt.kalbo). It was sort of an alt.callahans spinoff.

If anyone has it archived, I'd appreciate a copy.
natf

natf

August 8 2013, 10:29:34 UTC 7 years ago

Indeed. I still miss the JAnet (Joint Academic network) that we used to frequent when I was at uni in the 80s.