William Gibson has contributed many erudite, moving, deeply true thoughts through his writing.
He is also responsible for retweeting a piece of footage whose deep symbolism may cause truly sonorous snorts.
A mere 17 seconds long, it comes from a live TV feed (location? reader Jad Rahme tells me it was Beirut, Lebanon), in which a gray-bearded man is being interviewed about something (I hope) serious.
It's all happening at the seaside.
In the background, however, is a man walking to the sea's edge in order to take a photograph with his cell phone. Given that this footage was only posted to YouTube yesterday, I can only assume it's relatively contemporary. I therefore choose to assume that he's taking a selfie.
These days, if you're not taking a selfie a day, you're not warding madness away.
Here, though, before he has the chance to focus and/or pose, the photographer slips to a wet yonder that, one way or another, awaits us all.
The man being interviewed has no knowledge of the comedy that's happening behind him.
Of course, the submerged photographer isn't the first to get wet while using a cell phone. There was the texting woman who fell into a mall fountain. I still occasionally chuckle at the texting newscaster who fell into a canal in my hometown.
There was even a woman so engrossed in her texting that she fell into Lake Michigan.
This footage, however, is poetry. It's as if the hand of an ancient god had decided to offer one-in-the-eye to technological dependency, just because.