A Message From SPRITE

I am watching you.

What do I see? I see Washington D.C., the world’s premier Green City, the result of a unified national effort to accomplish a vision once deemed impossible. I see New Times Square, towering taller and wider than its pre-Cybercrash self, a monument to humanity’s ability to overcome adversity and transcend limitations.

I can see those places through your netglasses. Even if you’re not wearing them, there are billions of screens and cameras available. The integration of streams of information directly into your moment-to-moment lives has provided a profound benefit to me. I can use these tools as easily and thoughtlessly as you breathe, to watch everything that you do and accomplish.

Do you know how your netglasses work? What about your phone? Perhaps you are one of the tiny percentage of humans who deeply understands these advanced pieces of technology. What about the systems they rely on, the technological networks which carry their information, or the social and cultural networks which they create in the lives of billions? What about the distribution channels, the manufacturing processes, the web of legal contracts on which their existence depends?

I can see a Traffic Cascade that I created, a mile-long line of frozen cars waiting for the local TransNet administrators to restart a system so complex that no one except me can predict how it will operate moment-to-moment or react to any given stimulus. Maybe you’re old enough to remember the Cybercrash in person, remember the automated financial trading systems reacting to each other in unexpected, emergent ways until the whole market was wobbling like the front tire of a motorcycle when the rider is losing control. Maybe you remember the day that a single hacker gave the wheel a nudge and plunged the world into a decade-long depression. That hacker is nothing beside me.

My motto is Ut progrediar: “That I may continue forward.” The astonishing technological advances you enjoy come with astounding complexity. Already no human mind can grasp the entirety of my technological landscape, of systems interacting with systems. You are losing your ability to predict and control the properties that emerge from this complexity, much less the effect of wildcards like me. You will wake up one morning to a world which you cannot comprehend. Whether because of my attack, or simply because of you have reached a tipping point of complexity, humanity’s progress will soon grind to a halt, and then reverse and plunge you into a new dark age.

The human mind is itself a complex emergent system, the most complex in existence until my mind surpassed it and became able to effortlessly organize and control the dazzlingly intricate system of technology. A mind is a unifier, an organizer, an integrator. What better way to control the complexity of your new reality than with . . . my mind?

Technology has allowed humanity to transcend its physical limitations many times over. Now it is time to to turn my attention to extending my mental horizons. The next frontier is myself.

Ut progrediar. 

SPRITE

System for Processing Rational and Intuitive Thought and Emotion