Where we tethered ourselves with cords, now we tether to towers.   Where we waited in agony for a dial to go around-and-back-around-and-back, we hunt and fume.  “‘Hell’s that button?”  “Hell’re my specs?”     “Kill ‘em to standardize?” Once the ratcheting of a dial ratted; now radio waves, encryption crackers, and internet archives give leave to tell all.  Party lines made it  possible for as many as twenty to spy;  today’s snoops have over 1600 channels at their disposal.  Clunky sets are history, but little has grown too big.  Break the bank for “apps.”  Used to have to race to pick up or hunt up a booth and pray the pages hadn’t been ripped from a book hung on a chain.  Now we are effectively chained. Ears sting from ‘ring tones’ ranging from  classical music to drum destroying caterwauls, and our pockets, purses, and tabletops shudder and judder. 
This is progress?

                                            (c)  Phyllis Jean Green

                                                            2012

{Jes' sayin' ;)}