Everything one does across the network leaves traces, fingerprints in the dust of Nonspace.

Traditional artists lament the digital age.  Art for art's sake, however, is unbound by digitization.  Now the words of a lone man may flow across the globe, posted and reposted, shared and transformed and debated and related until it becomes a part of culture.

Been Rick-Rolled?

Know about those girls and their cup?

Ever receive a chain letter?

Admittedly modern "conveniences" alienate us so that the sorts of sharing that was once done by applying pen to paper or (even more shockingly) meeting face to face now transpires in less than a second in a snippet of txt-talk.  We are, it appears, becoming less human in a way.  I read that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person would come across in a lifetime a couple hundred years back.  The Machine is your friend because it is becoming us.

The marriage of flesh and silicon is a practical inevitablity.  My phone knows the time and remembers the phone numbers of my family and friends.  My computer keeps track of important information and acts as both lorekeeper and oracle, the place where I store those things that I create and the place I go in search of inspiration.  Soon, hopefully, I will be able to simply blink my eyes to view the 'Web, mutter beneath my breath to chat on the phone implanted into my mastoid bone, glance at the register to settle my check, and know that my workstation is powering up as I approach it.

Someday, and not a far one off, assuming we survive the barbarism of our infancy and manage to free ourselves from willing oppression, the Machine will be us and we will be it.  Yes, our lives grow infinitely more complex to the point that stopping to smell the roses is no longer trivial, it simply no longer exists as an option.  By embracing technology instead of shuddering in fear of it, we stand to achieve a unity of our species practically unknown outside the Insect Kingdom.

The key here, though, is liberty... free as in speech and as in beer, the best kind of free.  We need to cast off the chains that bind us and weight us down and truly live, as a species, and step boldly forward into the dawning of a new day.