Newsprint Blues: The Utility Paradox

(Note: This is part of an ongoing journal of Sproing’s experience as a mite on the sickly hide of that dying beast, Old Media.)

It’s nice to have water piped in from a reservoir that doesn’t have corpses floating in it; to have warmth generated by something other than peat I cut myself from the neighboring bog; to travel by a road free of ruts and rapine-minded highwaymen. Yes, very nice, these utilities that I only notice when my kitchen tap runs brown for half a day, or the power bill goes up, or I get stuck in traffic.

Also nice: getting the news of the day delivered straight to my eyeballs, by whatever conveyance. I need not gather in the square to have the baron’s approved dispatches bellowed at me; I can instead consume news wherever I like, with reasonable confidence that it hasn’t been red-pencilled by a self-interested governing authority.