I'm speaking to you.
Yes, you.
You see, there are two realities now.
There is one outside, created 15 billion years ago in a Big Bang,
a physical universe of stuff.
There are laws and limits here to keep us from breaking things.
Physical laws,
natural laws,
political
and social laws.
There is another universe too,
not really independent of the other,
but still unique.
It is much younger, but its growing more with everyday.
We call it the Etrix.
A non-physical community built of knowledge and maintained by people.
Folks like you and me. Only different, just like everyone else.
Some of us came here because we needed a medium to create in,
a way to say things we couldn't,
or didn't want to,
share in the physical world.
Some come here as an escape from a world that they think hates them.
We come from all walks of life,
all religons
(or lack there of),
all ideologies....
Well, maybe not all, but many of those.
We have built our own culture,
our own memes,
our own society.
The rest of the world thinks we are crazy,
crazy for building this little universe for our thoughts and ideas.
And then we invite them in to understand,
and sometimes they realize why we care about this place,
why we fight against those who try to ruin it.
...of course, some just take the blue pill and forget about this place
The Etrix continues to grow,
new noders and nodes pop up everyday.
And in an increasingly wired world,
with the Internet available on everything but the kitchen sink
(and even that is being developed, no doubt),
each new development brings new implications for humanity.
And new decisions.
And new problems,
new conflicts and old ones reheated for a new generation.
This is a fork in the road,
two branched running off into infinity,
our species at the crossroads looking down, trying to see the future...
Will we allow information technology to isolate us,
making us hermits in our little holes,
a cyberpunk dystopia and a future where we no longer
understand our fellow members of species homo sapiens sapiens?
Or will we use this new technology to help do the impossible:
bind humanity together,
creating lines of comunication where none had existed before,
helping people see things from another prespective
and hopefully fighting the ignorance that has caused so much
war
and hate??
The Internet,
wired phones
and computers,
the Etrix are only tools.
The choice of how to use them is up to us.
This is our world now. We call the shots.
Lets not blow it.
So what if my radical ideas have
already occurred to others?...That's not going to stop me from thinking.