Photo Credit - Charles Rondeau - Public Domain Pictures
Have you ever watched “Through the Wormhole” with Morgan
Freeman? Personally, I love the show but I only get a chance to watch it every
now and then. A little while back I was able to catch an episode. They were
discussing the internet and the various effects it had on society today. I
found the topic to be so intriguing I just had to share.
The first thing which hit me was the idea of being addicted
to the internet. Actually, this just isn’t as strange as it may sound. When a
person becomes an addict they become dependent on whatever substance is their
drug of choice. When they are deprived of that drug they will suffer physical withdrawal.
This means that their bodies go through measurable changes which can be noticed
by others, as well as, the person experiencing the withdrawal. In the case of
Internet addiction, scientists examined people who spent an average of 10 hours
a day online. Then, they took them offline. The test subjects displayed all the
symptoms of drug withdrawal; they had higher rates of aggression, impatience,
jitters, and all the other nasty symptoms of withdrawal. Internet addiction is
a real thing. Interestingly, addiction to the internet has an additional symptom
that no drug or alcohol addiction can claim. It’s true, I’m not making this up
- the Internet will shrink your brain. We are talking actual, measurable size
differences when a person becomes an Internet junkie. MRIs and CAT Scans were
done on these junkies and scientists found changes to both sides of the
prefrontal cortex and to the sides of each brain. Their brains shrunk, this is
a physical change that does not take place with drug and/or alcohol addiction.
We’re into a whole new game here, and that’s just the beginning.
What else could this Internet be doing to the human race?
Well, how about absorbing us into it, just as a single cell organism is
absorbed into a larger life form? Do you think this is Sci-Fi? It really isn’t.
There are, in fact, reputable scientists who believe that the Internet could
easily become a sentient life form. The premise works like this....we, human
beings, are the mitochondrial DNA which is absorbed into the larger life form,
the living Internet. They base this idea on the fact that the internet has
enough information and enough processing power that it would be able to develop
an understanding of humanity well beyond any understanding we ourselves would
be capable of. If, or when, that happens the human race will no longer be the dominant
species on earth. It is at this point, when we may witness the merging of
technology and human beings, as it could be beneficial to both. This wouldn’t
be the first time Sci-Fi ideas came into actual existence you know. Perhaps we truly
are in the dawn of a new era, a new evolutionary step for the human animal.
Maybe, just maybe, our need to be connected and the sentient Internet’s need to
feel and experience life will lead us into a merger of unimaginable
evolutionary growth. So, now I wonder, how much Internet do you need?
