Every Night We Do The Speaking.

This was a comment in response to something else, but it amused me so I'm copying it over here. The topic was What Part Did The Internet Play In Your Loss Of Faith? (It's here if you want to see it.)

"Listen well and 'member. We do the Speaking every night so we don't forget. Time was, time is, time's gone. 'Member the time now, when everything was meatspace. T'weren't no Internet. T'weren't no Metaverse."

Children in chorus: "We 'member it."

"'Member the times when the tech wasn't part of you. 'Member the times before you could even wear the glasses or the goggles to see into the Network. Member when a computer was nothin' more than a big, heavy box, like furniture, with a tiny little window to let you see... and there wasn't anything to see. 'Member when all there was, was people writin' words."

Children in chorus: "We 'member it."

"Some of these boxes, these computers, they were plugged into wires. Phone lines, we called 'em then. The box computers used other boxes, smaller boxes, modems to talk 'cross the wires. Without the modems, the box computers were silent and alone. 'Member them."

Children in chorus: "We 'member the modems. We 'member the copper wires."

"In those lost, dark days, you had to know the numbers. If you didn't know the numbers, the modems couldn't find other modems. They couldn't talk. We wrote the numbers on paper, in meatspace. We left them where people could find them. We found the numbers that other people had left. We put them in our computers, so our modems could talk to their modems, so our little computer windows could show us the words they'd written, and they could read ours. 'Member the numbers."

Children in chorus: "We 'member the numbers."

"Time is, time was, time's gone. That was world, when I first drifted away from Christianity. 'Member it."

Children in chorus: "We 'member."