You are lost, and the joke is that you don't know it. You think you know where you are - in your room, at your desk, on your computer, in Some Town, Some Country, Earth. And not only do you know where you are, but there are others somewhere who know it, too.
But they don't. And neither do you, really. You are a leaf swirling in a forest at autumn, a droplet of rain that has just plunged into a river, a mote of dust in the desert. You believe that you stand on a box in a crowded arena speaking aloud, your voice ringing to the far corners of the stands where hundreds of eager ears catch your words. You think this because you have that miraculous thing upon which our world now hangs: you have The Internet. And because it has the shortened form of "network" in it, because the term we use is "connect to the 'Net," you believe yourself plugged in, in touch with hundreds of thousands of others, a brotherhood as vast as it is powerful.
But the stands are empty, and all the audience is in the arena with you, standing on boxes and speaking loudly. And no one is listening. You are not listening. And though you read these words, there are a thousand people who will not, and this conglomeration of sound and meaning will swirl among the countless millions of megabytes in some vague place we call cyberspace. And you will forget it, but not before it has forgotten you. See, it's begun already. As you sit there, alone, in a place no one will come to because no one knows is there, you have begun to vanish. And it doesn't matter. The computer will last without you. It will sit there, as immobile as you, and let streams of information flow through it without ever knowing they have been there.
Breathe out, sigh, stretch, maybe shift a little uncomfortably - it will be over soon. There is little point in continuing, is there? Because this says nothing that all the uncounted others say, makes the same passionate speech in the same loud voice that no one can hear over the billions of passionate shouts filling the arena.
Connected? Networked? In touch?
You have never been more alone than you are at this instant, alone with your dispassionate computer.