We live in a computer age,
Where high technology’s the rage,
We can fulfil our every dream,
With just a keyboard and a screen,
The “Internet” is just the door,
To worldwide websites by the score,
No aeroplanes to give us flights,
Just “floppy disks” and “megabytes”,
We’re in a time, where every house,
Is incomplete without a “mouse”,
And windows don’t just let in light,
But access “Microsoft’s” delight,
And while we work, and while we play,
Bill Gates grows richer day by day,
Yet people of my generation,
Tear out their hair in sheer frustration,
Why do I feel like such a “clot”?
For somehow – I have “lost the plot,”
My RAM and ROM are quite confused,
My fuddled brain is so bemused,
“Fortran” and “Basic” leave me weak,
Lord, save me from “computer speak,”
But help I hear is on the way,
At least not many months away,
For when the year 2000 comes,
We’ll all revert to doing “sums,”
When that day dawns – or so they say,
Computers all will fade away,
And though some folk may scream and shout,
They’ll learn what life is all about,
Not sitting with a deadpan face,
Existing just in “cyber space,”
But talking, laughing, loving too,
These things we always used to do,
Like greeting people with a hug,
Thank God for the “millennium bug!”
- Tony C. Jones (1999)