Look At Us Now

As I compile my family tree,

Tapping away on my laptop PC,

I wonder what those, whose names I type,

Would think of life now, and all its hype.

In days of yore the man was provider,

And the Web they knew was spun by a spider.

Morals have changed as well, it is true,

They'd wonder what the world has come to!

These days of glamour and fast cars,

Celebrity, millionaires and scruffy pop-stars.

Televisions with super-size screens,

And almost all thinking being done by machines.

Eighty years ago, who could have known

There would be such a thing as a mobile phone?

And if you'd thought that computers were bad,

There would suddenly emerge the Apple iPad.

And you may as well forget about writing a letter,

As these days emailing is found to be better.

One goes into bookshops, to buy or just look

For a novel to download to one's brand new e-book.

The news reports crime due to family dysfunctions,

Or celebrities taking out super-injunctions.

While we all live with the greenhouse effect,

And the sad loss of manners and general respect.

Technology moves fast and sweeps us along,

But are all of these changes necessarily wrong?

Cures for diseases and a widening of knowledge,

And huge numbers of students at Uni and college.

Answers to questions, which couldn't be solved

Are nowadays nearer to being resolved.

The age of the earth, the planets in space

And the manifest wonders of the human race.

As I compile my family tree,

Tapping away on my laptop PC,

I wonder what those, whose names I type,

Would think of life now, and all its hype.