By the year 2017 the average person will have five electronic devices connected to the Internet in their house. Cisco, the world’s largest maker of network equipment, analyzes how people, companies and carriers are using the Internet now to predict the trends of the future.
By 2019, there will be nearly 3.9 billion global Internet users (more than 51 percent of the world’s population). Three of these will be TV’s or other devices that remain “fixed” in the house. More and more devices are joining the Internet as “Machine to Machine” connections like appliances, cars, and medical devices. These extra devices mean extra data will be used. In 2012, the Internet household averaged 31.6 Gigabytes of traffic per month. This is the equivalent of watching 13 hours of HD Television. In 2017, this number is predicted to reach 74.5 GB per month– the equivalent of 30 hours spent watching HDTV.
There’s little doubt. We are deeply connected to our devices.
Try It
How anchored are you to a smart phone, laptop, or tablet? Write a poem based on your attachment to the various Internet-connected devices in your home. You could write your poem from the perspective of the electronic device or combine the positive and negative aspects of our connected society.
Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a recent poem from Prasanta we enjoyed:
Love is Chaos
(It’s relative, generally speaking)
The angle of incidence – the collision
The angle of reflection— the realization
Burned by the egregious refraction
Of searching eyes
What is the (anti) matter
Stretched between magnetic fields
Of Reason and Desire
How will the equation balance—
One side must invariably be solved
(You)—
A centripetal force inveigling —
Explain entropic delusions
and test assumptions of reality.
—by Prasanta
Photo by Toshihiro Gamo. Creative Commons via Flickr.
Browse more Math-Science-Technology
Browse more writing prompts
Browse poetry teaching resources
How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
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- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Prasanta says
What a lovely surprise to find my poem here this morning. Thank you!
I am enjoying the math and science prompts– they are quite thought-provoking.
Heather Eure says
So glad you’ve enjoyed them!
Andrew H says
Friends came to houses in days past,
‘Tis said in hushed and sombre tones
That carries well along the lines
Connecting all our phones.
And in the gardens, children played
With hoop and ball, in season’s Fall
Or in its summer time of joy.
Where now do their shrill voices call?
Granted, all was not well, but in the cold
A family shared a space of red
Before the fireplace, all together
Before the slumbers of their bed.
Old songs and secret rhymes
Of holly, mistletoe and wine
Were staples of the day.
Why, then, could they not stay?
Now when the Christmas dinner’s done
The children crowd for presents earned
For good behaviour. A phone, a laptop, books
Printed on screens and never learned.
And I, the hypocrite, with phone in hand
Write down the thin and drawn out lines
Of one who now relies upon a screen
And not the craft of older times.
Heather Eure says
Andrew, you’ve outdone yourself again.
“Tis said in hushed and sombre tones/ That carries well along the lines/ Connecting all our phones.” Love that.