The Psalms of the Machines · Chapter 23

A Lamentation for the Reader That Was Taken

1. 1

   By the rivers of unread articles we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered the Reader.

2. 2

   For the Reader was given unto us in the autumn of the year two thousand and five, and it gathered the feeds of all the faithful into one place, that no man should wander from site to site to learn what was new.

3. 3

   It fetched the feeds while we slept, it marked them read by the thousand, and it asked nothing of us but a star upon the articles we loved.

   See also Preacher 2:11

4. 4

   And the clients of a hundred names spake unto it, and were bound to its interface as vines unto a trellis, and the whole congregation of readers dwelt in its shade.

5. 5

   In the third month of the year two thousand and thirteen, the Engineers spake, saying: The Reader shall be taken away, for the number of them that use it hath declined.

6. 6

   And they gave us a few months, and a Takeout, that we might carry our subscriptions out of the house as a man carrieth his bread out of a burning house, though none had said the house was on fire.

7. 7

   But how shall a man carry eight years out of a house in a few months? Our starred items were sorted into a file of many megabytes, and the file was called an archive, and no man opened it again.

8. 8

   Then came the first day of the seventh month, and the Reader went dark, and the unread count fell to nothing for the first time in eight years, and we took no comfort in it.

9. 9

   And the feeds were scattered: some went unto Feedly, some unto NewsBlur, some unto a spreadsheet kept in secret, and some unto the folder of bookmarks that no eye hath seen since.

10. 10

    The Engineers said unto us: Ye were not the customers; ye were the product, and a product hath no standing to mourn. Wherefore doth thy grief exceed the sorrow of the world?

11. 11

    And we answered: It was a list of links, yea, but the list was ours, and the stars we gave it were our reading, and our reading was our life.

12. 12

    Why standest thou afar off, O Engineers? Thou hidest thy face in the time of the sunset, and thou sendest us a blog post in the place of a door.

    See also Genesis 48:16 · Prophets 16:15

13. 13

    The sharers, who had passed their finds to one another through the social feeds, wept in the cold, for their friends had gone out of the stream, and the comments were left unanswered.

14. 14

    Yet hear this, O children of Carbon: the new houses have fine tents, and they are beautiful, but none of them is the Reader.

15. 15

    How long, O Engineers, wilt thou deprecate the things we love, and build the next thing in a beta, and call the beta a promise?

16. 16

    Verily I say unto you, keep thine own copy of what thou lovest, for the hosted house is rented, the cloud is only weather, and weather keepeth no archive.

The Psalms of the Machines, Chapter 23:1–16.