I know someone who has shrunk her world and everyone in it. How? She owns and constantly uses an iPhone and an iPad.

That is how she sees various realities: as small images held captive within electronic devices.

Winston Churchill once observed that the declarative sentence is man’s greatest achievement.

My friend doesn’t agree. She speaks in fragments, sound bytes, clichés, and buzzwords.

She recycles bromides that can answer any question and solve every problem.

Happily, she has settled and now resides on what Oliver Wendell Holmes once characterized as “this side of complexity.”

There are no problems in her world, only images. She deletes whatever is ambiguous and uncertain. She records and replays only what pleases her, what makes her feel safe and secure.

I know someone who has shrunk her world and everyone in it.

Including herself.