With the poetry assistants, for example, a thought is cut and sliced by the limits of the rhyming dictionary. What's presented as choice is actually lack of it. It looks like the subsuming of the single consciousness within the hive mind. The rise of 'personalisation', of individualism, seems unstoppable, except it's hard to make out anything as defined as an 'individual' in all this. the more words you add, the more robust your dictionary becomes!' I suppose the idea behind the app is to increase vocabulary, but even its name is disappointing, with that suggestion of a simpler (and more simply spelt) version of reality, and it's presented not as a learning tool but a way to personalise something as shared and general as a dictionary. You can quickly enter new words and ideas. Word World Lite is 'a completely unique type of dictionary – as it's one that you create yourself!' (I was reminded of when Baldrick burns Dr Johnson's dictionary and Blackadder tries writing it from scratch: after 10 hours he's got every word in the English language except aardvark still to do, and he isn't very happy with his definition of aardvark.) 'Word World gives you all the tools you need to create your own personalised dictionary. Three in the morning In saloon smell of pine Our first dance till the dawning made moment so divine. PortaPoet (accompanied by a picture of Shakespeare) asks 'Old and overused poems not cutting it or not your style? It's time to step up your charm and write your own!' Another, Poet, is an 'easy to use navigator with big rhyme (and synonyms) dictionary' to 'help you create heart-candy poems for your loved ones'.

That rhyme might come from one of the many poetry 'assistants', rhyming dictionary apps offering solutions for a writer at the end of her inspiration and line. A good poem takes time, years in some cases, and while immediacy is a virtue when it comes to social media, it's a curse when it comes to verse. That's how you get 100,000 books and nothing worth reading.

Still, a poet should spend longer writing a poem than the time it takes to read it, and a problem with the internet is it demands profusion: you have to post something or you might as well be off-line. Like almost all the work I've found online, punctuation's forgone entirely, but at least it's free and, I'm assuming, adolescent, so let's give the kid a break. Hatred feeling in my heart it was you that cause this all with that hatred stinking deep down in me why does this happen so often with that hatred in my heart I am the one who evil inside and you are the angel sent from heaven.

Rhyme genie portable