Isn't it Ironic, or at least what most people think of as Ironic.

See if you can follow this, because something keeps striking me as peculiar, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.
I read a blog post that someone linked on Facebook this morning.  The blog post mentioned Neil Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness.  It was a book that I had heard of in several conversations and thought might be worth reading, but somehow, probably because of my technology depleted attention span, I could never remember to buy it, borrow it or otherwise obtain a copy.  Upon reading the blog post, I was reminded and did not waste time.  I had been looking for something to read for about a day and a half (in the age of my Kindle Fire that's a long time), since finishing some short stories by Flannery O'Connor.  For those of you not familiar with O'Connor, which also means those of you who have never been clinically depressed, let me recommend A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and Other Stories, for that troubling day when you feel like human beings are basically good.  If you ever want a refresher in the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity or a general refresher on sin, pick up some O'Connor.
I digress, there's that short attention span again, back to Postman, I guess he needs to ring twice (snare drum please).  Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985, in the heart of the Reagan years.  He observes in a rather more serious manner the same thing that Doc observes in Back to the Future: "No wonder your president's an actor, he has to look good on television."  Postman's premise is that television as a medium was in the process of changing the nature of public discourse.  The book as a whole is filled with prescient observations of modern American society that have only become more true as time marched on, but he was only talking about TV.
In 1985 we were playing Atari and the only thing personal computers were good for was writing book reports and playing games like Choplifter in monochromatic green and black.  And yet Postman was so right, so very right.  "Change changed," the speed at which the culture has changed and is changing is facilitated and defined by the ability to communicate and exchange information.  This is sort of a raw data flow phenomenon, meaning it doesn't matter what the quality of the information is, as long as it can move fast and grab people's attention.  Which, I think, probably explains why the Fifty Shades of Gray Trilogy is atop the bestseller list.
The book, using mainly the age of "new" cable networks like MTV and CNN, traces how television defines and limits cultural discourse to a decidedly more shallow milieu than the age of print media.  Ideas had to "fit" into soundbytes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard that grumpy old man talk a thousand times since then: public discourse blah, blah, blah... I wonder what those crazy Kardashians are up to now?
Oh, dear Lord, maybe we need to change Amusing to Amused, past tense.  Whatever damage television may have done to the public discourse, the internet, has visited a hundred fold.  Now any idiot (like me), with a computer (like the one I'm typing on), can become part of the public discourse.  No vetting, no requirements, no accountability; an easy, anonymous voice to spew nonsense, hate, dirty pictures, whatever you want, whatever people will read or look at, or tweet about.
Great googly moogly, we is in trouble!
Oh yeah, so here's the funny thing:  I read about a book that discusses how technology is changing the public discourse in 1985, on a blog by some guy who I have no connection to whatsoever, and an hour later I've downloaded that book on my Kindle Fire and am reading about how an electronic media has supplanted the good old fashioned printed word, but I'm reading the printed word on an electronic medium and now I'm writing about the printed word on another electronic medium, and maybe tomorrow, someone will read this and go read the book about how electronic media are changing the public discourse, and then maybe they'll write a blog about it and so on and so forth and this is getting to be a really long sentence and if I was talking I'd need to take a breath right about... Now.
I think this whole thing might be ironic, at least in the Alanis Morrisette kind of way, which at one time made me really angry because none of the things in that song were actually ironic by the correct definition which is: when the intended meaning of a word is the exact opposite of its actual meaning.  But now Alanis doesn't make me angry, she kind of makes me nostalgic for a time when an mediocre looking girl who sang angry songs, even if they were rhetorically flawed, could actually be popular.  That is, I guess before the public discourse regarding music shifted from Nirvana to Nickelback, Chuck D to Lil' Wayne, Alanis to Christina Aguilera, or whatever other junk the kids are listening to today.  I'm probably a little behind on those changes, because I'm 38 now and I like me my old timey music, like Nine Inch Nails and the Beastie Boys and I don't want to have ANYTHING to do with Justin Beiber, because I lived through Milli Vinilli and Vanilla Ice, so, in the words of the Who, "we won't get fooled again."

So, did you notice?

Are you lost?

Or could you actually follow that incoherent rant?

If you could, congratulations, you're probably a member of Generation X, just like me.
If not, don't worry, you're probably a sane reasonable person who has not been completely corrupted and discombobulated by the rapid changing of change.  Hold on to your sanity.  Read a book, while you still can.