Went on a hike today to Hawk Mountain with college friends Dan and Cate. Really gorgeous hike. Dan just turned 30. Saw an enormous snake, probably as thick as my forearm (I’m going to the gym, but it’s no Popeye arm!).
For being such an offline activity, we talked a lot about the internet, AI, etc… We were reminiscing about the old internet, before 2FA, AI summaries, monetization of everything.
I take the internet for granted all the time; but it really sounds like science fiction given a bit of thought.
Big servers hum along in LED lit data centers. Messages pass through fiber-optic cable UNDER THE OCEAN at near-light speed.
Other messages bounce off satellites between our pocket computers. I think part of wanting to start this site is to join in that dance of text and light but on my own terms, not mediated through the same four companies that run everything else. Not monetized.
Back to the hike.. It was lovely. Teetering on rocks in the woods, stopping while Dan ID’d plants and mushrooms.
He showed us a plant without chlorophyll called an Indian Pipe, which is a parasitic plant that steals sugar from a fungi that trades nutrients with tree roots. I mentioned that I take the internet for granted, but I certainly take the woods for granted, and all the amazing things that plants and fungi and animals do.
I’ve read that mushrooms can communicate through mycelium networks, and that trees can do the same in some way.
I’m reading the book ‘The Overstory’, and I’m about to start ‘The Hidden life of Trees’. All that to say; I think there’s a lot to learn in the woods about how to better connect to eachother.
One little way is perhaps a better internet, of which you and I are hopefully building together in some tiny way right now.