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The following is a feed of Chris Burns' comments from various websites, including this one. The commenting software is provided by a company called Disqus. Here is my Disqus main page: https://disqus.com/by/AALBC/ Disqus also allows you to provide links to other pages on your site as well as serve ads. These are both services that Google also provides. Google also does a better job. The scrolling display below was created by software from a company called FeedWind. I could do this myself, but they make it easier for anyone to do this. If you pay $50 per year, you can remove the "Powered by Feedwind." I used these type of feeds on the upgraded author profiles here on AALBC.com. Here is Christopher D. Burns (@CDBurns) author profile page: https://aalbc.com/authors/home.php?author_name=Christopher+D.+Burns where you can see his comments as well. My thinking is that people can users can use feeds like this to consume content created on indie websites from across the. This is not new technology. In fact, it is pretty old. Before the advent of the high-end cell phones with 4G connections and tons of storage, we could have information from website send directly to our cell phones and see content from websites. Before that, email programs could be configured receive updates from bloggers, news sources, or anyone who provided an RSS feed. Today social media has taken this over. I'm trying to take back control. This also explains why Facebook has killed the RSS feeds they previously supplied.

...and I'm not that old. In a few days, God willing I will be 55 years of age. I would like to live to be 100, but I'm not doing anything to help accomplish the feat, but I digress... Sometimes I wonder if why I want to even bother sticking around that long. It is not like the culture values the elderly for their wisdom and experience, but that is a minor consideration. Lately, I feel like I'm surrounded by a bunch of mindless zombies. Case in point; leaving my apartment building yesterday, I got into the elevator with a woman, who was fullly engrossed in whatever she was doing on her phone. I glanced over to see what it was (she did not notice me), and saw she was on Instagram. The doors to the elevator opened, and we both exited. We followed the same path out the front door. We crossed the street and went our separate ways. Not once, even to cross the street, did the woman take her face out of the phone. It seems no matter where I go or what I'm doing the majority of people around me have their heads buried in a cell phone. When I'm on the subway and look (I usually look), they are playing candy crush (really popular) watching a video, or scrolling through social media. Rarely do I see people reading books or articles, they are usually just mindlessly scrolling. They don't even appear to be that entertained. I'm beginning to wonder if the nature of humanity is changing and I'm being left behind. What will it be like in another 10 years or even 20? Will it be a world that I even want to be a part of where people are more tied to their technology that each other? All of the trends people talk about enthusiastically actually concern, if not outright scare me; virtual reality, connecting everything to the net, the growth of social media, etc. Even that device Amazon sells that allow people to order more Coke just by asking for it gives me the willies. We had a snow storm about a week ago, so they did not collect trash of a couple of days. The amount of trash piled up on the street waiting to be collected was astonishing. I wondered what do they do with all of that trash, why do we create so much of it, and why doesn't anyone care? Sometimes I just wish I lived in a time when you could still see the stars at night. I'm no technophobe--far from it, but I remember a time before all this technology dominated our world and I'm not convinced we are better off. @Cynique, you've seen more profound changes over a longer period of time. What do you think? Is it even possible to answer the question and discount the overt racism and sexism from years ago?

　 I guess that's 'cause we's real niggaz and you ain't down Ain't down with the crew? Lol.....or ain't "downed" enough 40 ounces??????