The True "Final Frontier"

I was reading a cracked.com article (Good website, its articles are a lot better written than one might expect from an internet comedy site) and they had an article about the vigilantism that's been going on around the net.

http://tinyurl.com/cu94js, by the way.

Anyways, it had me thinking, which is a terrifying thing in itself. My thought is this: Is the internet the true "Final Frontier", as we've been calling the rest of the universe for so many years? After all, space is simply a destination. We've been there, quite a few times. Hell, we've been to the moon and back, although unfortunate circumstances has cut back on such activities. So what's so special about space?

There has been many a science fiction story (Neuromancer, Ghost In the Shell, etc.) that involved characters to dive into the internet, to surf data instead of stars or waves. And while our current situation may not be as extensive or dramatic as those stories, we're getting fairly close. After all, nothing exists in the so-called "Real World" that doesn't exist online. You can order food, let alone other objects, off of websites and have them delivered directly to you. People can communicate through social networking sites with people they know from their everyday lives, or some that they've never actually met. Forums exist to exchange ideas with people who go by names with numbers and symbols, although admittedly the real worth in these threads gets lost in the asinine memes and trolling.

But I repeat myself. The point that I am trying to make is that we are progressing to a point where we're transgressing the material plane, and moving into a society based around ideas, not money or physical power. That sounds a lot more religious than it should be, so let me explain. In the real world, the intelligent are typically the people who are left in the lurch by the more economically or physically powerful. For every Bill Gates there will be ten thousand people with above-average intelligence who have jobs slaving over a hot Bunsen burner to make some new product for the company that owns them. And yet, on the Internet, that same tube-jockey can be whatever he wants. No, I didn't mean that he could be a elf with +10 charisma, that's another topic. I'm saying that he can create things that he keeps, and can profit from them. Or, even better, make brilliant products then release them as creative commons. Some people get rich this way and move into better lives, but most still remain anonymous, and yet still make the world better. Their ability to do things is not limited by their money; after all, you could have a computer running an OS from twenty years ago, just hook it up to the internet and you have the same power as someone who re-purposed every computer at the LCH. And obviously physical strength has nothing to do with it either, pounding on your laptop is more likely to break it than make something coherent.

But once again, I digress. The big point is that we've conquered the land, the oceans, the sky, and to a point, space. Now, as computers become more integrated into our everyday lives, we are moving from simply destinations into an entirely different existence. Someday we will be able to "surf" the web in a more literal sense, but for the moment we must be content with simple keyboards. It's the one frontier that is left, and it's not to be conquered, but developed. And boy is it working hard. I hope that you understand what I'm saying, I'm afraid I tend to rival Faulkner in my disjointedness. But I do wish the best to you, reader.

Once again,
Grimm