“The Internet is falling! The Internet is falling!” Chicken Little yells, feathers flying, laptop clutched tightly to his breast, as the young fowl runs to the local avian geek barn for help. “It’s the EMP,” the scaredy-cat capon moans as he collapses in a heap at the feet of the wide-eyed-black-glassed-tape-nosed nerds.
Beaks drop, glasses droop and pocket protectors sag as the frightened flock of gallus gallus domesticus realize their worst fear is pulsing toward them and their precious. The electron-soaked waves of digitalized data that wash back and forth sightless before their eyes, to be captured and burst forth onto their beloved wire-laced and chip-linked screens, those sinous curves of serpentine knowledge are endangered by the nameless nightmare. The beloved Internet, their precious, is about to fall to the dreaded EMP.
Screeching, clucking and crowing, they run mindless in all directions, bumping into each other, cock-a-doodle-dooing “Where can we go? Where can we go?”
There may be no escape for them and for us.
If the EMP, be true and truly here.
An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse. It is an intense burst of electromagnetic energy caused by an abrupt, rapid acceleration of charged electrons.
The theory is that when the EMP hits the wires, components and compotes of our machines, the electrical surge will overpower every protector, will bypass every plug and will blast uncaringly with the raw force of its small-particled energy into the nooks and crannies of every computer, hand-held and cell. The gourmet viands of the wired and wireless domains of our modern lands will be in the instant scrambled. In ever hand, at every station and on every table, there will be only toast.
Bon appétit, while you can.
In theory, the escaped impingement of excited electrons will drive us from our tables of reflective repast back to the books, scrolls and parchments of our patriarchal past.
Society, as we know it, will be too confused to do anything but sit back, stare amazed and start to laugh.
To that uproarious end, some think only nuclear explosives could be the cause.
That, it could not and never happen here and now.
The scare is said to be an old-wives tale on an Internet that encourages those wives to talk, a joke made upon ourselves that could never blossom to fruition. The Internet is too large and too widely dispersed. Even if some were effected, the rest would recover and repair. It’s just a joke.
We attended a humorous farce of a play yesterday afternoon. The actors were moving so fast and talking so quickly that the audience was forced to fall into unbridled laughter as a most pleasant palliative of first resort. Faced with the witty insanities of the emergently complicated interpersonal situations and the apparent impossibilities of any filial, spousal or culinary resolutions, laughter was the only course. It made little sense to do else. The information received was so great and so absurd that the theatrical performance teetered on the brink of disaster and was intensely funny.
The assault of mixed and moving signals must have affected the synapses of our minds in some strange and unforeseen manner. In the hall outside afterward, we talked of EMP. It was after the end of the insanity of words that the insanity of electrons gone wild popped easily to our heads. After the guffawed hilarity of a house collapsed in laughter, we could somehow see the hem-hawed reality of a way of life fallen to disorder.
Order and disorder were perhaps the linchpins connecting our thoughts.
Great disorder may be funny and entertaining, but it is difficult to put right. The confusion was too great. We did not understand the play in the end.
Great order may be just as entertaining and funny, and it may in its way be just as difficult to put right. The potential for confusion may be too great. We do not understand how the Internet could end and can only watch as it does.
If you put all your eggs in one basket, does it matter how big that basket is?
If you put all those funny words in one play, can you really put that play back together again?
If you put all those word bytes onto one Internet, can you really put that Internet back together again?
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
The lesson, I think, is this: In too much order resides the disorder of the jabberwocky of EMP.
To protect the order of information and prevent the fall of an overloaded Mr. Dumpty, perhaps we should try not to put any more weight on that wall. And, in that, net another approach to the Internet. Place the worrisome and tipsy Humpty on a diet and move on down the line. It may be just as entertaining and effective, and we’ll be much less worried about scrambling our only egg.
We may find that there are other ways to laugh.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.”
Enjoy the play,
Grandpa Jim