'The Internet is alien' .. theory..

Here's a new theory for you guys.. I've been thinking about this one for awhile, so bare with me ;p

And make no mistake this is just a theory, and that in no way am I trying to make the claim this IS what is. It's merely a enthusists' way throwing out a bone for others to chew on ...

Onward to the theory!



When Bill Gates finally figured out how to make a computer turn on a light swith with a series of 1's and 0's (switches) it all started..

The birth of the computer...

Sometime between that very day, the first day the personal computer was sold massivly to the public, and the birth of the Internet; alien intervention happened.

We leaped from personal computers that the user can program in BASIC-A language only (TR-80 series), to a HUGE network of computers that spans to every inch of the mass populated zones, that communicate in different ethnic languages and code, and that now has every metropolitin city in the world completely and utterly "by the balls".

Within 20 years, we went from no connection to the outside world, to complete and utter IN-YOUR-FACE connections.

See, the internet is a beautiful thing.. Everything that happens around the world, is transmitted around the world every second of the day.

World news never traveled so fast as it does now. The very second something 'big' like the Russian School Attacks in september of this year happen, its instantly picked up on by every news outlet in the world. And they all instantly tap into the nearest news station to the action. All airing live footage from the same single source. All it takes is a major news website to post "Breaking News!" on its mainpage. You might be surprised that videos and live feeds are instantly fed through news stations through the internet streaming capability ;p They dont use radio antenna's anymore! A la our satelite system.. which is a HUGE backbone of the internet... Making transfering data through land lines long distances virtually extinct.

Now every bank has internet access. Companies like Ebay have actual money flowing through the internet with companies like Paypal that transfers actual credit card numbers over the internet to banks.

About every computer that is used now, regardless if its a home computer or a business computer, is connected to the internet one way or another. And is in most computer users eyes, virtually useless without the internet. The internet has become such a part of peoples lives, that they can't even comprehend how it could have been 20 years ago... And the ones that were alive 20 years ago are being left behind, quickly.

I've read theories about our rate of technology evolution since Roswell. And I'll be first to step up and say it was a poor theory (Sorry Roswell enthusists). The connections of the world's knowledge through our 'Internet' is the reason for our massive rate of evolution.

People now have access to every bit of information in the WORLD at the tip of the fingers. A few simple strokes, and many years of reading, one could learn so much about physics or chemistry or science in general that they could virtually 'skip' years and years of schooling that was once necassary to be a scientist... all on the internet from their homes, for free.

No more was it necessary to spend hundreds of dollars to sit in a college course when you could practically teach yourself everything you needed to know on the internet. If you dont beleive me, start with Google, type in Physics and begin teaching yourself Physics right now by looking for a beginners lesson... there's thousands...

.. with more people learning the necassities to build technology, and the average knowledge base of 'how things work' raises, technology begins to take off, each idea built ontop of the last...

Here's my theory..

50 years ago, we barely knew what was going on in Germany during the entire WWII.. now we can get up to the second reports from simple street bombs being detonated in Iraq.. through the internet.

Sometime between the birth of the computer and the birth of the internet, I believe we were visited by aliens.

I believe they've been watching us for quite some time. When they witnessed the birth of our first computer, they stepped in to start our evolution. They setup a network of computers and satelittes with the US that could communicate throughout the world. Now dubbed the internet.

Don't you find it strange that massive satelittes were launched into space by the US specifically for the internet, before they even released the internet to the public?

And..

.. if you had something as powerful as the internet, that would allow you to get up-to-the-second reports from your spies in other countries, or the pending attack by a superpower, would you be so willing to share it?

It was shared on purpose.

If you don't think we're not evolving at a massive rate, think back 20 years, and think about how EXTREMELY different it was to live, to pay bills, to get the news, to shop, to communicate. If you werent alive back then, read into the history of how things were then.. (use the internet!)

In only 20 years the entire world was connected to eachother. One could by rugs from Korea from their living room in Fort Worth, TX. One could have groceries delived to their door, one could send mail instantly to China instead of waiting 2 weeks land mail for it to arrive.

I beleive the knowledge, the technology and the planning were not humanly possible back then. There was absolutly no way Bill Gates or any human could envision a network this vast looking at a computer crunch 1's and 0's... and then writing millions of pages of code that would become the now window's platform, in under 20 years.. and lets even throw in the time it took them to actually build the network infrastructure.

So that narrows it down to roughly 10 years.. between the time we invented a computer, and instantly knew how to write millions of pages of code that now runs the 'internet'..

So that gives us 10 years that these computer geeks figured out 1's and 0's can do alot more then print text in basic laungage programs, and change the 1's and 0's into millions of pages of code that now runs our internet,

... or the code and knowledge was given to them...




The internet gave us the opportunity to connect and to learn from eachother. It gave us the opportunity to be nosey of what other countries were doing.

It can also be our demise. Our evolution depends on how we use the new tool of life.. this tool of connection.. Do we use it and get angry about how the world has always been? Or do we use it to spread peace and learn from eachother?

The limits of the connection between the worlds population given to us via the internet are infinite. And this is our test.. do we use this connection to fight about our differences, or do we use it to propell our knowledge into making our civilation more advanced? Both angles are in action now.. unfortunatly it seems we're using it more for hate then knowledge.. imagine if we all stopped bickering on ATS and started learning physics, discussing scientific theories in forums, and began to unraveling the mysteries of our science? Could you not tell me, if all 3000+ of this boards member base stopped using the internet to bicker, and used it to delve into science, the chances of 1 of us to make a scientific breakthough is quite likely?

But instead of learning what is readily available, we choose to remain ignorant to it all, and use the internet to argue and bicker... and the occasional email. .. well.. most of us..

Regardless if the internet was introduced by aliens, or some Godly force gave one of us the knowledge to make it, this network of knowledge, connection, and communication is so vast, it's now a necassity. So what will it be.. will you use it to enlighten the people of the world that read your comments, or will you use it to project your anger and dislike for other people?

Our fate lays in every single civilion of the world...

And hell, to throw an even bigger bone to this theory.. what if the aliens gave us a time limit to stop our fighting? What if we don't evolve in the right direction by 2012, they whipe us out!





I have no supporting facts, again, this is merely a theory... and some very strong beliefs..















... ... Hi grandma and grandpa .. I know you will never read this.. or know what a forum is.. or hell, what an ON switch looks like now.. but always remember I loved you and your ways, but its time for me to evolve, wish me luck ... ...

It's good you've put an esoteric theory together and followed through with a piece about it but I can't say I agree with this.

When technology is needed it evolves quicker, so let's not forget that we've been at this whole computer business since the 1930's. It wasn't till the 1950's we started using computers. The formation of giant mainframes with tape drives and fixed circuits transmitted binary information at an agonisingly slow rate. The technological advancements they made were never "revolutionary" but slowly grew every year.

It's kinda like when you take a cent and keep doubling it. You'll eventually get to startlingly high amounts from that little coin. That's kinda like we have it now with computers. We have powerful systems that are number crunching in order to form bigger systems. It's a good cycle.

Also, the Internet isn't as fast as you think. The Russian school siege took a matter of hours to be picked up by many news outlets.

Originally posted by QuietSoul
So what will it be.. will you use it to enlighten the people of the world that read your comments, or will you use it to project your anger and dislike for other people?

I guess, your question is pretty interesting... but as you are waiting for my answer, I can only say: People are different! So which one am I? You are to answer that, not me!!

Good luck!

Originally posted by Nerdling
Also, the Internet isn't as fast as you think. The Russian school siege took a matter of hours to be picked up by many news outlets.

I beg to differ. The difference of the siege being picked up in a matter of hours, versus millions of US citizens hardly comprehending what was happening in Germany during WWII (that last many many years) is dramatically different (Before the internet).

The speed in which information travels, stories break, and are reported to the public is insanely quicker.

I see you failed to mention Al Gore. Great article on the internet though. I think you do not give enough credit to talented and intelligent earthlings like Bill Gates and crew.

I'm still trying to figure out how Jeff Goldblum was able to make a Macintosh laptop talk to an alien mainframe when we can't even get it to talk with an IBM that well...so don't mind me....

Quiet,

You have an interesting theory.

My problem is that you have your initial facts wrong.

Bill Gates did not invent the computer hardware.
He did not create an advancement of computer hardware.
He first created MS dos (line entry operating system).
He and his company created windows operating system-software.

He did not create the internet-the military did, although major universities could also be partially credited with that.

He did not create the first internet browser-but could be argrued that he created the first universally accepted/used browser.

ahem, william gibson envisioned the internet and much more that is still yet to come. read him, he is a must-read! there were dataconnections much sooner than you might think.

i am not on this board to picker, actually the only reason to be here is to learn, and to find new ideas and theories anout what happens in the world such as yours in this post.

i think i learn much more from surfing the net than i could from spending my time using other mediums including books. i read wikis alot, go to a dictionarysite to improve my use of language and can just google any fact that i want to know.

i also share information if i think it might be of use to someone or if i am asked for it, i hope the aliens do regonize my good usage of the medium.

[edit on 21-12-2004 by feyd rautha]

Bill Gates did not invent the computer hardware.
He did not create an advancement of computer hardware.
He first created MS dos (line entry operating system).
He and his company created windows operating system-software.

Actually, Bill BOUGHT MS DOS from a programmer pretty much, then marketed it to IBM.
He then pretty much STOLE the Windows idea from Steve Jobbs, hehe....

The internet has become such a part of peoples lives, that they can't even comprehend how it could have been 20 years ago... And the ones that were alive 20 years ago are being left behind, quickly.

Great Thread QuietSoul, although the 20 years time frame is probably stretching it a bit, I would say just a mere 10 years ago for
most people.
Oh and BTW us old people do just fine with technology thank you very much

Originally posted by QuietSoul
When Bill Gates finally figured out how to make a computer turn on a light swith with a series of 1's and 0's

Bill gates didn't invent the computer. He made a peice of software called 'windows'. He didn't even, as far as I know, program in machine language.

Sometime between that very day, the first day the personal computer was sold massivly to the public,

What does apple have to do with this?

Within 20 years, we went from no connection to the outside world, to complete and utter IN-YOUR-FACE connections.

People were working on computer networks longer than 20 years ago.

Everything that happens around the world, is transmitted around the world every second of the day.

Well obviously it doesn't do that. Its just a bunch of computers networked togther.

I've read theories about our rate of technology evolution since Roswell. And I'll be first to step up and say it was a poor theory (Sorry Roswell enthusists). The connections of the world's knowledge through our 'Internet' is the reason for our massive rate of evolution.

While I can't see any connection between roswell and an inexplicable techonological increase, there's even less of a connection between that and the internet.

they could virtually 'skip' years and years of schooling that was once necassary to be a scientist ... all on the internet from their homes, for free.

People aren't going to be able to become scientists by only doing research on the internet. Scientists have to do a bit more than mere research, and even today they don't do it primarily on the itnernet. They have their own super communication network, peer reviewed journals. The internet, quite obviously, has no peer review or fact checking or anything like that.

If you dont beleive me, start with Google, type in Physics and begin teaching yourself Physics right now by looking for a beginners lesson... there's thousands...

I'd be surprised if there was a single person who had developed proficiency in any branch of science because of pure internet 'education'.

now we can get up to the second reports from simple street bombs being detonated in Iraq.. through the internet.
Not for nothing but, so what? So instead of finding out that day when something happens people find out much later.

Sometime between the birth of the computer and the birth of the internet, I believe we were visited by aliens.

The development of the internet and other large computer networks is a rather well documented occurance. There's nothing 'magic' about it that would require aliens.

Don't you find it strange that massive satelittes were launched into space by the US specifically for the internet, before they even released the internet to the public?

The governement created large scale computer networks for its own use before the 'internet' went public.

It was shared on purpose.

There was nothing extraordinary about it, the technology wasn't top secret and you can't use the internet to get up to the minute reports from your spies if the internet doesn't exist. THe government backed the technology for the internet, but they didn't build the network. Its just a bunch of computers connect to one another.

, and think about how EXTREMELY different it was to live, to pay bills, to get the news, to shop, to communicate. If you werent alive back then, read into the history of how things were then.. (use the internet!)

So what? So now instead of getting a paper bill in the mail, people get a paper bill and an online statement. Instead of calling someone on a telephone, they IM each other. Its not so different as to require alien intervention.

I beleive the knowledge, the technology and the planning were not humanly possible back then.

To make a computer communication network? Are you kidding? Lots of private business had some sort of computer communication networks. T

There was absolutly no way Bill Gates

Bill gates had nothing to do with the internet.

or any human could envision a network this vast looking at a computer crunch 1's and 0's... and then writing millions of pages of code that would become the now window's platform, in under 20 years.. and lets even throw in the time it took them to actually build the network infrastructure.

Your personal disbleif is hardly eviedence of alien intervention. Why don't you use that 'internet' to 'teach yourself a whole college educations' worth of computer programing nad networking to find out how.

And to build it? A computer can be made to act as a server. They communicate with each other thru the telephone system.

So that narrows it down to roughly 10 years.. between the time we invented a computer, and instantly knew how to write millions of pages of code that now runs the 'internet'..
There is no 'code' that runs the 'internet'. People use html and all sorts of other codes to do stuff on it and display different communications. But it didn't require 'millions of pages of code' to get darpanet and other networks to work.

... or the code and knowledge was given to them

Are you actually contending that html was designed by aliens? Or that the data transfer protcols were created by aliens and immpossible for humans to have developed?

It gave us the opportunity to be nosey of what other countries were doing.

It allows one computer to get information from another computer that is also on the same network.

imagine if we all stopped bickering on ATS and started learning physics, discussing scientific theories in forums, and began to unraveling the mysteries of our science?

The people who want to do that are.

Could you not tell me, if all 3000+ of this boards member base stopped using the internet to bicker, and used it to delve into science, the chances of 1 of us to make a scientific breakthough is quite likely?

Why should everyone here devote their lives to science? And, again, getting a real science education is going to require a heck of a lot more than internet searches.

But instead of learning what is readily available, we choose to remain ignorant to it all,

Like, say, ignorant to how the internet functions and how it was developed?

Bill gates had nothing to do with the internet.

Yep, I was also going to put that in my last post, Tim Berners Lee is
the person credited with giving us the internet as we know it today AFAIK

QuietSoul,

You need to read up on the history of computing and of the net a bit more.... Could aliens have given us the "transistor" - maybe, but computing was already well on it's way in an electronic fashion in the 40's. Remember those monsters pressed into service doing artillery calcs (ENIAC, UNIVAC, etc.)??

The net stuff came much later, and the big iron was already in service at every major company doing accounting work without networks - all hard wired terminals. The ARPA boys gave us the ARPANet and the rest is history. Jobs, Gates and the Altair and DEC folks came at the end of this and if Gates had not pulled a fast one on IBM who knows where we'd be.... PC's were just an offshoot of the miniaturization that was occurring in circuits and if you extrapolate where the whole "grid" computing thing may end up, it is likely the central computing model will be with us again, just shared over lots of processors. Compuserve (others too) and the BBS folks gave us the push to really see what was out there, but that was all dial up and yes, modems used to be hugely expensive as were early PC's.

Net was primitive to say the least in the late eighties and early nineties and it was the geeks that took the pioneering work and ran with it in an open forum and bingo - the net as we know it. It took a lot of work to get the routers built to handle this as it was all point to point before that occurred. If ARPA had been fully aware of what they had let out of the bag, again who knows where we'd be today..... I guess I'm trying to point out that there were multiple problems being approached by multiple people. The integration of the computing and network piece took a long time to come together.

Now, information flow is much better today but even from the 20's on telegraphs and later teletypes and radio were spitting news around the globe and you can go back much further and look at the nets of couriers that moved information to the early leaders, traders and businesspeople around the world. Those in the know always had a leg up and it paid handsomely to put in place the network of couriers. Once undersea cables and communication sats went in and up - those teletypes were bringing news to our home town papers faster than ever - once bandwidth went up, we got live video feeds.

I'd say it's a stretch to say there was grand alien plan at work here but I will give a nod to transistors and maybe semi-conductors as a possible "gifts" from whatever source. Than again it could just be some humans that put in the long hours and had a light bulb turn on....

While I can't see any connection between roswell and an inexplicable techonological increase, there's even less of a connection between that and the internet.

Check out Corso's "The Day After Roswell".

Also, I believe there was an extremely good debate on the transistor in the debate threads too....alien or not alien?

Well, a theory is just that, a theory...so, kudo's on expressing it with some thought, but, as you can see, the details were pretty easy to pick apart. Especially the poor computer history lesson that you provided. I think that Nerdling said it best...

When technology is needed it evolves quicker, so let's not forget that we've been at this whole computer business since the 1930's.

We have seen the internet, and all of it's many facets, grow amazingly fast because the businesses around the world have demanded it. Starting out very small in the workplace, it grew. The need for speed in today's business place is to blame for the rapid pace.