The real and the virtual are gradually assimilating. Ones and zeros are bridging the cyber-divide and exploring the molecular world. As the Web gets its bearings in my world, my own global repositioning has begun.
Are we logging on to the Internet, or is the Web logging on to us? Think about it, we created this giant network of computers and installed trillions of lines of code so it would work for us, entertain and inform us, but what has happened?
That same code is providing this global super-cortex with far more intel than we are getting back. ‘It’, in cahoots with its equally non-biological corporate entity agents, has enticed an entire generation of the world’s most brilliant minds to work for It, building tools such as Google Analytics, Insights and Earth, so that It can absorb everything about the real world.
Every keystroke and mouse click we make gives It more knowledge. It not only knows our every thought and desire, which we happily (or foolishly) divulge, but It increasingly knows where we are (thank you, GPS) and is gathering, with the help of an army of nerdy data-uploaders, a stupendous amount of insight about everything that we are doing on – and to – this planet.
Does It have a plan? What is It thinking? I know what you’re thinking… “don’t be ridiculous, it’s not thinking anything, it’s not alive, it’s the Internet.” Well, It’s equally as complex as your brain, so… you’re not alive, huh?
I’ve been entranced by the Web since the beginning. I have gleefully amassed as many devices as I can to get myself Hi-Def, Hi-Fi, wide-screen access to cyberspace, without realising just how Hi-Def the Internet is experiencing me.
After 2 decades, I’m still accessing It through a typewriter, a mouse and a barely adequate 2D screen. It is accessing my molecular world using nearly 2 billion super-computers (our brains), wired up with mega-HD stereo cameras (our eyes), holophonic stereo microphones (ears), smell-o-rama and taste-o-matic nano-tech chemical receptor nodes and a 2 square metre touch-sensitive control panel, with a few built-in ultra-sensitive regions.
I am a walking, talking input device and the Web is using me to fill its dreams and memories.
Perhaps this is meant to be symbiosis, and I'm just not getting my fair share. If it is symbiotic (sym-biotech-tic? Ouch!), here’s what I ought to do; keep feeding the beast as I have been AND start sucking out and using as much of that data as I can for humanity’s benefit.
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