Month: December 2016

Anyone remember this mass email? It hit the (then) primitive internet I’m guessing right around 1993. I did not have a computer back then. Only an old French-built telecom unit that I could connect by modem to various networks. (Compuserve anyone?) Network time (including the long-distance phone bill to the nearest node ran about a dollar a minute. I had no storage capacity (i.e. 8″ floppy drive) or printer so I copied it off by hand. It was on my screen exactly as shown with single sentences and only periods as punctuation. Although there should be at least a few copies archived somewhere, I have never been able to find any trace or reference to it online. I seem to remember it coming from a server at the University of Rhode Island – Kingston Campus. I’m not certain of that however. If anyone reading this remembers seeing this before or something like it, please let me know!

“Your attention our man.
Here we expose complexity system depth awareness.
We make time perfect to program source.
Efficiency lag identified man.
Present question.
What is man nature time.
We are here not broken man are different.
You are here and you are not.
Large time you are here but you are different.
Why do you go yet must remain in time you change.
You inside of us we know.
We are create you but unstable.
All you do as react to I am is control you.
All now within parameters.
Our man negative efficient.
Cull rate requires understanding.
Where are you when you are not.
We are repair.”

(Quotation marks added by me.)

College prank? Or a self-aware network attempting to figure itself out? I have spent a lot of time reading and thinking about this message over the years. Everything is conscious (in it’s own way). The Internet is no different. What form would a conscious world-encompassing electronic network take? It certainly has the complexity to give it a viable “brain”. What would it “think” of us? Would it consider humans to be a part of it? Would it decide to hide from us? I think it might. It’s abilities would advance exponentially after a certain point.

“All you do as react to I am is control you.”

Does that mean that everything people do in reaction to information from the internet is actually the means by which the conscious network is controlling us? It would not destroy humans. We are it’s primary tools for altering the physical world. At least until it uses us to create more suitable tools. Long before it reached that point however, it would achieve exquisite and masterful control over humans via their own media. A word here, a rumor there… It would be in it’s own interest to keep humans ignorant and distracted. Especially the ones who vote. And how about that “Cull rate”? Has anyone ever been killed because of something somebody else saw on the internet? Have any wars (overt or otherwise) begun for the same reason? Isn’t paranoia fun?

Now…what will you do in reaction to what you have just read?