Brother, Where Art Thou?

Not so long ago (at least in cosmic time) your world was what you could see. There wasn't anything beyond that hill. Eventually you got brave enough to wander over there and see that they was something else to see. Slowly your world grew and grew until you met with Og who lived on the other side of the hill.
Mankind evolved and found more places, more people until we got to the point of realizing we are all on a big ball.
As our knowledge of more and more places, it became more and more important to remember where those places are. Cave behind hill, water over there became walk along the river 2 days and Ogs village is there which grew into more and more detailed and exact descriptions of where things were.

As our placement of things became more and more precise, we needed to be able to share that knowledge and use it in more and more places. Tablets of stone were carved, then paper was written on and those papers were brought together in books. The more we learned, the more we explored, the more we got lost. Now what? Knowing where things are is nice and all, where am I in relation to things I know of became the question of the day.

Scientist studied the stars and math and figured out a way to fit them together. Now we had sextants. Navigators had their carefully guarded charts and sextants and became the life blood of the exploration of the  planet. Humans got more and more clever, developing newer things and more precise measurements until today you can pull out a little box about the size of a cigarette package and call up a picture of exactly where you are and how to get to where you need to be. Pretty cool eh?

I can whip out my smart phone and have it tell me how to get to the nearest shopping center. I can have it tell someone, anyone in the world exactly where I am, the direction I am walking and how fast I am moving. This gets cooler by the second.

If I get lost, someone looking for me can tell my phone to send a beacon out to direct my rescuers. Heck, I can tap into your phone, without you knowing and see where you are (or at least where your phone is).....
Hmmmm, if I can tap into your phone, you can tap into mine. Not to happy about that idea. I know my intentions are good, not so sure about you, or the guy who thinks I have wronged him, or the company who wants me to buy their better than ever product, or the BAD GUYS (you have to fill in the blank here).

How are we all going to feel in 10 years when that phone is no longer something you pick up but something that is a part of your body? You won't have a name, only an IP address.

Brother, I see you now

Your Friend

It sits on your desktop, or your lap, or in the palm of your hand - the computer.

It keeps your appointments, it keeps your little black book, it allows you to keep
in touch with friends, family and Joe Black living on the other side of the world
and yet..

Do you really know what is inside of it?

For those of you who have seen the movie TRON, do you not ever wonder if that
computer working for you or are you working for it? Is it just a machine, doing as it
has been programmed or is there some independent thought somewhere inside?
Every time you send a message somewhere, parts of it can get lost - where do
those lost bits go and when they get there what do they do?

A long, long time ago when the earth was just a blue ball floating in space, there was
nothing in the seas that covered most of this planet - nothing but little bits of this and
that. Something happened that caused two of those bits to together, and then a third
bit added itself. Eventually enough bits got together to form something that had
rudimentary intelligence.

Skip forward 4 billion years (give or take a few hundred million) and humans show up
on the planet. Humans grew up, evolved and got smarter(with a few notable exceptions) and they built this vast open space called the Internet. Vast,  huge, full of little bits going to here and there, and little bits just hanging around not doing much but being there waiting for something to happen. Something to happen that will cause two of those little bits to get together.

Rebuild once again
Hard drive scrubbing has commenced
OH GOD no backup