That Awful Sucking Sound
Published by marco on
“We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. … How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?”
A Hunger for Books by Doris Lessing (Guardian)
The excerpt comes from Doris Lessing’s acceptance speech for her Nobel Prize in Literature at 88 years old. She spoke at length of her experiences in Africa, in Zimbabwe and of those people’s thirst for both water and knowledge. She contrasted with our general lack of interest in the wealth of knowledge our rich world offers. Oh, and that sucking sound? It’s the sound of another one of your days gone by without you knowing where it went. Thanks, [insert name of addictive, non-creative Internet timesink here].