Fantastic Voyage: Before and After Internet

A Fantastic and spectacular voyage through the human body and into the brain

Apollo 11 was a fantastic voyage ... stepping onto the moon was the crowing achievement human and engineering in the industrial age. 

1969 was also the year when the first message was sent between machines across a network on what could be called "Internet Day". At 21:00, on 29 October 1969, engineers 400 miles apart at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI) prepared to send data between the first nodes of what was then known as ARPANET. Charley Kline attempted to remotely log in across to the network  ... Kline typed an “L” and then asked his colleague at the other end via a telephone headset if the letter had arrived.

"Do you see the L?"
"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."
"Yes, we see the O."
Then we typed the G, and the system crashed ...

Yet a revolution had begun" 

Its been 50 years since the first moon walk and 50 years since the first message across what would become the  Internet. In the those 50 years the Internet has come to wrap the Earth in its web and human exploration beyond the Earth has ended .. its almost as if a day in 1969 was "Judgement Day" ... but wait ... there's more.

The Internet promised a fantastic voyage ... .if not to the stars then for ourselves - the rising tide for this voyage would lift all boats ... it had the potential to make everyones life better and to improve equality ... and for a while it did.

However, down on Earth technology doesn't happen in a vacuum. Technology is developed in a context and by humans (at least for now) and is subject to human nature and through history we see time and again how technology is either developed by or appropriated by those who have or seek power and control. The Internet and especially the Web  has over the last decade in particular been increasingly appropriated by those of wealth and power ... where once technologists may have been engineers and were interested in the benefit for society now capitalists ... its all about the business ... it reminds me of how Mel Brookes once described showbusiness as shBUSINESS. The positive potential of the Internet today is just for show ... for digital tech capitalists its all about the business and how to fool, entice and entrap us in their Web.

The fantastic voyage for the Internet may be a voyage to a kingdom of ice where we are penetrated and possed by souless digital tech capitalists and the souless machines made in their own image.

The fantastic voyage of the Internet may only be fantastic for some ... the tech capitalists who put us on their life-support system to drain our data and become fantastically rich and powerful as a result. A voyage to the stars may never happen ... it just isn't profitable unless its for some vanity project or a necessity once the erath has been drained and ruined.

A voyage to the stars may not be made by people at all - it will most likely be made by intelligent machines and the only fantastic thing about it may be that the alien consciousness discovered is the alien consciousness of artificial intelligence but if made in the image of digital tech capitalists ... will it have a conscience?