The Wonder of Modern Technology
“Humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.” -Peter Theil, Zero to one, Preface.
There is something incredible about the modern human’s condition of becoming lightning. Their apotheosis into the primal force of technology; Into becoming creator.
In the old days, lightning struck and lit a flame—the first invention of import—and its thunder rippled and echoed magnanimously across time. In the same spirit, invention has flashed brightly and inconsistently in the human mind ever since: sudden bolts of semi-random inspiration that at times fizzled and at others rumbled forth across history in great waves of happening. Only sometimes could the human being take up the divine mantel, and more often they were left listening to the distant rumble of thunder.
Now? Well now speaks for itself: the all-consuming flow of lighting from person to person, continent to continent, where all people become lightning rods so charged as to approach being lightning themselves. Each a place where the most casual lightning strikes again and again; filling them with rushing force, momentary power that exceeds all they knew before. So that they might be encouraged: “Burn bright with your white-hot power! It is through your fingers and your eyes that lightning loves to go!” All a precursor to the dream of being themselves the locus of lightning, of human divinity.
And now that you can connect yourself to a whole network of lightning, is it so hard to imagine that you are not an occasional listener or a recipient, but the heavens themselves? That cast lightning down upon the world with awesome power and make its form.
The rushing crackle that spans the world to fizzle and spark across the final barrier into your electric mind. Isn’t it lovely to remember? How you are now becoming an elemental of lightning? Your ancestors dug in the muck, and now you are part and parcel to a whole interwoven net of electricity—the stuff of the heavens themselves. Electricity coursing through your mind, your veins, your eyes, every fragment of your being. Animating you anew, arching your back like a rod, and then lightning strikes again and pours through you, from nerves to neurons; the crushing rush of information—the whole world at the tip of your tongue. A string of electrons that calls to you and even knows your name. Beautiful, is it not?
The feeling, the flow, the shock when the flashes of inspiration in your mind meet and match the incoming current; the focus! That magical moment when the lightning no longer merely strikes. When you are not just a conduit for its immense power—though a conduit is a beautiful thing—but when that power becomes a tool. Then lightning sparks at last fromyour eyes and makes the world in your image.
And the better-built our network becomes, the more often and precise is that image. The more it can manifest at that exact moment when the lightning becomes you and streaks backwards up the sky to impale the clouds with the frightening power your mind.
This is power. This is the beautiful moment of creation at your fingertips. Never before have knowledge, making, and humanity been so close together.
A divine moment coopted by humans. A reproduction of the self that has been attempted, for better or worse, a million times—not just throughout history but as its very essence. Now for you so near at hand. The final steps in human ascendency. And the lightning is just now begging to breach that final barrier and join with the human mind.
From the simplest activities to the most advanced, all humanity has become empowered. The power of creation and the thrill of invention have become democratized. And though thunder these days is a little quieter on average, is it not beautiful to be lightning? To, in your form, be at least a little bit divine.
So when you next sit at your computer, or produce your mobile from your pocket, remember my words—remember your lightning.
A Postscript by THE PROPHET
We have loved lightning for its thunder; not for the moment of creation but for its ramifications. For the possibility of a non-trifling effect. Now that we are all thunderbirds with clipped wings, creatures of lightning incapable of thunder, what is the point of lightning? One in one hundred ways to momentarily achieve a twenty percent increase in heartrate, the release of a few scattered chemicals (kept in check for… some reason?), a brief chortle of the lungs and throat? Or really as the fundamental force in the human brain, the micro movement that makes the macro movement of history?
Rather, lightning is a moment—a crack strike and a rumble—and the absurd and continuous crackle that infests us now is like a constant state of electrocution; with every hair stuck on end, full of power but full of anxiety. Meaningless anxiety as it turns out, that only serves to prevent us basking in the rumbling satisfaction of thunder.
For lightning without thunder is invention without effect. And what is the point of that? No matter how beautiful and available the process, it will always be a disappointment.
But no, better to remember instead your greatness and majesty, oh creature of lightning.
