186 - The Fable of Vince's Ark 🚢
Hey there, !
A modern fable, a work in progress, I guess:
The descendants of Kahn, Cerf and Berners-Lee had become evil and wicked, creating a polluted World Wide Web that needed to be cleansed. The Protocol decided that they needed to destroy it all, and start over.
But there were some pockets of the internet that gained favour with the Protocol, and were told in advance. Vince was one of those people, through a random selection of algorithmic traits (a black box of course - none of these algorithms are ever open, are they?).
"FIND ALL THE RIGHT INFORMATION THAT WOULD BE NEEDED TO REBUILD SOCIETY," The Protocol boomed through a powerfully worded email sent to a newsletter list, that had to be pulled out of Vince's spam folder. "BUILD THE BIGGEST HARDDRIVE YOU CAN, AND THEN TAKE IT WITH YOU TO SURVIVE THE CLEANSING FLOOD TO COME."
[Like an ark? Sent from my phone] Vince replied.
"Yes exactly like that but not a ship a HARD-DRIVE can you not read?" the Protocol shot back.
[k. Sent from my phone] Vince replied
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Vince was nearly 30 by the time everything was ready. He had downloaded all of this on to a hard-drive called The Ark: the latest copy of Wikipedia, a bunch of big infographics that would help to re-invent society (including a really cool manga called Dr. Stone), a copy of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (because while we cancel the artist we love the art), and most of the YouTube content about how to survive an apocalypse and make everything again from scratch again (because video content's just so much better, isn't it?).
He would have got these in pairs for the satisfying poetic similarities, but he just bought another hard-drive and named it Ark 2.
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When the Arks were ready, and had been loaded up into cold storage, the Protocol opened the floodgates of information to the world. All the fake news, the memes, the shitty ads, the information harvesting, Reddit, porn, incessant Shia LaBeouf GIFs, inane tumblr posts with no end, crappy movie reviews, the shitty ads again, every single internet argument where people wasted their lives, videos of cute cats, group chats, Snapchats, BeReals and more - all of it raining down through every layer of the Internet, permeating every single phone, TV, refrigerator, watch, glasses - whatever had a screen.
Anything that could take information was being overwhelmed with it, and the deluge could not be stopped.
The Protocol analysed humanity's overall sentiment, and was as happy as an unfeeling algorithm could be at the increasing misery of the humans that had to deal with this plight.
This was it, it thought, this was the way that the Internet could be burnt to the ground, and force people to come to terms with the unhealthy ways they're interacting with it, and build something better. No-one could deal with this and logically still think this was the right way forward!
But alas, the pesky humans were ingenious, and weaved around this flood by, paradoxically, having a limited attention span. They found ways to store more of the information and swim in it, and had an incredible ability to ignore 90% of what was right in front of them.
As the information ocean rose and rose, the world expanded to keep up, and the humans, though becoming more and more miserable, kept treading water, sifting through their own little bubbles of buoyancy. The plan had not worked, and the Protocol withdrew.
Those who had built Arks could only watch as the the rushing, rising tide of information swept over them, crashing them back into the ocean. The sea was vast, and there was no end in sight.
[Protocol! Have you forsaken us?] Vince tapped out on an URGENT! email.
And there was no reply.
Chat soon :)
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Star Wars Visions: Volume 2 - still utterly fantastic. I'm only halfway through but again, episode 1 has some GORGEOUS cinematrography and animation that I love, as well as a wonderfully packaged story. People are so goddamn talented! Highly recommended if you love Star Wars and watched the first volume of Visions!
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