Ode to a Laptop Screen (Neither Greek nor an Urn)

Ode to a Laptop Screen

(With further apologies to Keat's Ode on a Grecian Urn)
How still the keyboard sits in quietness,
The bastard-child of touch and typist time,
Selectric’s history, now faster express
A speedy tale of PCs in our rhyme:
What typist’s legend haunts about thy shape
Of dictation tedious stories told?
The processing of words on screen
Stopped the tedious hard print cold!
Of liquid paper and self correcting tape,
Ancient carbon paper, what do those mean?

Hard memories are sweet, but those with speed
Are sweeter still, so see that RAM is fast;
Not just the min but max of giga need,
With hertz to spare and memory to last
If lights go out. This byte-ful brain
Is more than scribing words to print:
Typewriters checked no words or syntax;
Editing and cleaning up’s a lesser strain
Though handwriting and spelling now are lax.
Each product is enriched by triple-W mint.

Ah happy, happy search that has a spread
Of information never seen before,
To questions strange we once did dread:
Answers accumulate and more and more.
Oh happy internet with many useful sites
For ever up and there to be enjoy’d
From sciences and hobbies, to habits weird
Freedom’s reaching new populist heights:
Ever ready, for many purposes employed.
(What Whole Earth Catalog pioneered ?)

Where goest we in this computer age?
To what employ these screens and text?
Social media reflect common ills and rage,
Children’s online uses have adults perplexed.
Spleen notes burst, bigotry explodes online,
Facebook flames and Twitter tiffs
Are constant proof of obvious hates
Posts can span the odious to sublime
Most reactions and submissions are riffs
Of common prejudices, all that irates.

O Laptop! My work & play partner dear,
How helpful two-score years ago you’d been
When college papers had me filled with fear.
With online resources, five footnotes are thin.
Optimist genes drive me to vision of hope:
When old age shall this generation waste,
The net shall remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Seek out the truth, that’s your duty, --that is all
Ye search online, and all ye need to know.”