Page 23 - Fables volume 3

The Buzz

One humid summer evening, a little past sunset, a swarm of gnats
assembled in the air outside a country house. A radio broadcast came
through an open kitchen window and added to the vibrations of the
insect cloud. It was background noise to the important business of
establishing the bugs’ population density, but suddenly a sentence
caught their attention.
“Of course, the young people of today have the attention span of a
gnat.”
The swarm’s crepuscular buzzing changed pitch.
“Did you hear that, Gned?” Gnolan was one of the first to react.
“I’ve never been so insulted in my life!”
“Ah, don’t get your antennae in a knot. They’ve got all the time in
the world. Take a good look at their spans: bridges to nowhere, most
of them. I’ll bet that big authority doesn’t even know the difference
between speed and velocity, or time and interval.”
“I’ll say. I doubt if they could spend relatively as long as we do to
listen to one of their empty utterances. And another thing: what are
they busy doing with their fancy knowledge?”
Gnelson joined the conversation. “Ha! I know where you’re going
with that one: they are on a path to become just like us. Their goal is
to communicate with each other and their machines faster and faster,
until they are almost as fast as us. Whoever made that fatuous remark
probably intended it as criticism, and simply revealed a chasm of
ignorance about that younger generation.”
“Nevertheless,” said Gnolan indignantly, “I feel rather hurt. Isn’t it
enough they come out here and spray us with poison any time they
feel like it? Makes me gnash my mouth parts.”
“Let’s go back to that lame analogy, ‘span.’” Gned was intent on
making his point. “The distance between ignorance and knowledge is
not to be judged on its length. Over-elaboration is a waste of time,
and the signal-to-noise ratio means longer is not better. It is an
admission of failure on their part if children cannot remain attentive
from one end of a tortuous and pompous explanation to the other.”
“Indeed,” chimed in Gnick. “They cannot have it both ways: the
gatekeepers of old-fashioned communication are missing what is

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