You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
From my experience let me say this: in today's world it is no bad thing for a politician to have had the benefit of a scientific background. And not only politicians. Those who work in industry, in commerce, in investment. Indeed, so important has it become that I believe we are right to make science a compulsory subject for all schoolchildren.
Not infrequently, we encounter copies of important human beings; and here, too, as in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.
Of course, technology is very important now. It's there, its available. It's there to be use however you see fit. You can use it and the jihadist can use it. In their case they have been very effective at making use of technology, particularly with websites. It's primarily through these websites that they do their recruiting. But it's not technology that makes them that way.
Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do ... is to write as little as possible