Changes in the technology of communication are occurring so rapidly that we human beings now move through a cloud of messages as densely(1)____ as a locust-storm. Every new device increases the speed and the outreach of the last, and young people are now governed by the gadgets in their hands, which don't merely contain their lives(2)____ and also to a great extent dictate them. Of course, the print media still exist. There are old-fashioned people like myself who make a living by writing things, and old-fashioned people like you, who support us by reading, or at any rate buy, (3)____what we write. But maybe it's only people like us who are able really to regret for (4)____the changes that are sweeping away so much that we depended upon. The rest of the world is caught up in the torrent of gadgets, each new model is(5)____ designed to relieve its owner of one more source of spiritual(6)____ exercise or one more obstacle to fun. Memory now exists behind a screen. Very few (7)____is stored in our heads, and our recollections drift in cyberspace like asteroids, unconnected to the orbit in which we move.
Written letters are a thing of past, (8)____and essays are downloaded from the sites devoted to them. Research means surfing the web, and as for social life-this is a matter of tweeting and twittering as one drifts through cyberspace. Facebook friendships bubble up in a moment, and consist of (9)____ a mutual agreement between strangers to put themselves on display. More and more does it seem that putting yourself on display is what it is all about, which there is nothing more to love and friendship than being mutually visible.(10)____