The things we do for... more

Silence

Solitude

Absence

Darkness

Forgetting

What do these things share in common? They are all in short supply - maybe even close to extinction. This shortage is recent. Throughout human history, and up to very recent times, all of these were available in abundance. Their abundance in fact led us to consider these as bads rather than goods. This is in line with the well known economic principle of diminishing marginal returns to scale. In simple terms, things which are in short supply are valued highly. When the supply of any good, even one which is highly valued or essential, is increase to an extent which far exceeds its demand, that good, will become a 'bad'. Water is a classic example of such a good. If one has no water, one will pay anything even for one glass of the essential commodity. If then the supply of water is increased to a huge extent, if it comes in buckets and won't stop coming, one will probably pay anything to make it stop.

Silence, Solitude, Absence, Darkness and Forgetting were all goods which we had in such great abundance that they came to be considered as 'bads'. And so we made great efforts to diminish their supply. We invested great amounts of effort to great all sort of technologies to protect us from them. Cars, planes, phones, electric light, extended memory... all of them efforts to fight silence, absence, distance, solitude, emptiness, darkness, waiting...

The greatest of these technology, the one thing to kill them all... is The Net. The net is everywhere, ever-present and includes everyone. We quickly spun it all around the planet, making every effort that no one, no place and no experience, no memory will ever be allowed to slip out of The Net.

And when we had the whole world covered, we spun it further, into the future and into the past. We are now quite confident that every sight, every thought and every word that were ever seen, thought or spoken, or that will ever be seen, thought or spoken, are held safely forever in The Net...