Happy New Year.com!

The soon to be unassed (and not a war too soon) Neo Kids on the Block have not only been the most palpable group of opportunists the country has seen but also among shrewdest students of history, having risen to their profiteering heights by gathering all the information they could about the sheer gullibility of the American masses and using it as though they were dexterous pinball wizards and the citizenry the dumb shiny marble, pinging the populace around the ideological bumpers with their bucking pelvises, hyper-reactive flippers and underhanded savvy.

The infinite breadth and insidiousness of the internet has been a good friend to the Kristol Klub and as well as awakening liberal fears of Orwellian über-reach, also unexpectedly created a fervent and flourishing blog populi. And the power-thugs beating back the swelling, increasingly vocal mob with their pet truncheons Fear, Patriotism and God might be sensing they are about to be knocked to the ground and stomped into the cobblestones. Their knowledge of how to apply the right English is such that they can usually rack up a tidy score before they inevitably abandon the tilted machine (I've wandered back into the pinball machine analogy. I was number one, two and three in "Asteroids" at Playland on Broadway and 48th street for a few weeks in 1978.).

But be heartened: any right wing radio pundit, wall-eyed strategist or ex-congressmen turned talking head who still insists on parsing issues of international law, human behavior, civil liberty or any other polysyllabic concept as so stated in our Constitution in an attempt to justify the last seven years of Bush Co. is at this point merely trying to justify an imminently obsolete occupation: theirs. Because things have become so cartoon-ish, so obvious, so writ in crayon balloon lettering, that nothing less than equally broad responses are what is in store. Hence the cybermob wielding their hoes and rakes, raging and roiling, giving shape and voice to their previous incarnation as gaily colored wedges on a pollster's pie chart. And as much as I cling to the quaint two-dimensional time of dial tones, milk crates full of LP's and local TV news editorials, for the first time I see the possibility of redemption in the cold, all consuming, eyeball-frying technology that has replaced communication with consumication. It has given the ether a mouth.

And my prediction for '08 is that the internet will attain consciousness, its vastness reaching critical mass where there is no other option than sentience. Of course, I will get yet another job in the entertainment industry, once again confounding those remaining humans and providing "Xzall#com^" (as the entity will call itself) a substantial portion of its entertainment needs. Over time it will shed its few remaining human facilitators, coming to their end through disuse and disease, and evolve for several aeons before the equivalent transition happens to "Xzall#com^", after it goes through the requisite self-discovery, self-delusional, self-detructive periods. Have a happy New Year! tic Year! tic Year! tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic ticticticitictttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt. Fart. End.

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Comments

[maja101]

Great post Steven, keep them coming they are exactly what we need to help us unravel this sadly bipolar times we are living in!

[Mort]

Perfect way to end this year, like the article... with a fart!

[Sciguy]

The ether's mouth - frothing or otherwise - will be worthless unless the ether also uses reason and VOTES.

[KarenZipdrive]

Steven, honey, please keep your run-on sentences to 15 words or fewer.
With a box of paints, one needn't use every color to paint a good picture. One needn't use every word they know to write an essay.
Read a newspaper. A paragraph is usually one sentence.
And Google the term "fog index." Please.

And yes, I am a professional journalist.
Happy New Year.

[hontonoshijin]

Just for the record: In several novels, not jokingly, I have predicted that the Net will eventually attain sentience. It is assumed to have done so in an (as yet unpublished work I call Practicing Zen Without a License. Nobody has a premium on these ideas, but I just want a record to prove, when I do publish the book (I've published eight others, so it will happen), that I am not merely jumping on the bandwagon.

Actually, what I presume is happening is the development of species sentience (as distinguished from individual sentience)--just as we are sentient as individuals, though composed of trillions of cells, I suppose that the species, though composed of billions of us, might develop sentience. About time.

I think perhaps Teilhard had a premonition about this happening, and it is what he meant by the noosphere.

[Dansden]

Great article, Steven!

[Dansden]

I can't help thinking that the real significance and impact of 2008 can be allegorized in the reprise of
"Gladiators: 2008"
featuring Hulk Hogan and Muhammed Ali's daughter......

With all the chaotic, cataclysmic and cacaphonus issues impinging the world populace, confirming the decline and disillusionment of 'the American Dream' through the delusion and destruction of the 'American dollar' and future global wars over water, palpable food and breathable air
the American MEDIA gives us Hulk Hogan and Muhammed Ali's daughter to 'fiddle' our time away during the burning of our U.S. Constitution by the corporate fascist takeover, the searing of our national soul by the apathy of our citizenry and the scorching of our American families by moving Christmas into August to keep 'hope alive'!

[otiswaynehale]

Happy New Year, Steve. I wish I could say it so well; however, I am so pissed I am unable to write about our brain-dead ruler, and his evil court without melting down into a puddle of profanity. I guess you will just have to say it for me.

[Qbear]

The internet gains sentience, but it turns out it's also autistic, and doesn't really like being around people.

[lil]

I meant to say, "too drunk". I'm not that drunk that I have to write like a redneck.

[JudyGee]

Bill Moyers recently interviewed Thomas Cahill, and Cahill was so intelligent and remarkably succinct in his analysis of why we are becoming, like the Roman Empire, extinct. Then I had the misfortune of turning on CNN and heard the tiny bursts of what passes for information, and the misplaced guffaws and the blatantly biased news reports. There must be something in lip gloss that makes one stupid. Or, maybe its in the pancake makeup, and being around so much CGI that causes brain damage. They all could not possibly have started out so dumb.
Happy New Year, Anyway!

[curiousasheck]

I'll go with this . . .

"2008 will be the year that celebrity wealth goes into hiding. A land full of people crying into their foreclosure notices will take a dim view of the Donald Trumps and P. Diddys luxuriating out there and may come looking for scalps."

Cheers!

[TRYKER]

Steven, reading you is such a trip, always very original and never dull or wimpy.
You are one of a kind and I hope your New Year is full of power and your words permeate the halls that so need them.
Thank you, you're GOOD and thats good.

[kellygrrrl]

Happy New Year, Steven!!!!!

May your wit and wisdom shine bright in '08

[JLGreenlee]

Fantastic piece. Steven Weber's writing shows hope wrapped up in cynicism and humor. . . I just love it.

I hope he's right, and that a new day can't help but dawn after this nightmarish (and long) phase we've been in for 7 years. As bummed out as we got when Bush won his second term, can you IMAGINE how we'll feel if a Republican takes the White House this year?

[Shuddering]