The Galactic Internet

 

We all know how the internet has changed our lives. It's not souly because of the information it can fill our minds with, but because of the applications that it brings us. We can go shopping, check flights, make money, network with people, form movements, archive entertainment, connect businesses, and lots more.

There's no knowing where the internet will take us in the next 10-20 years. What if, we were to look far further into the future?

This century we are closer than we have ever been to discovering alien life. If it exists, we may well discover it in the next few decades. Far more significant however, will be the discovery of intelligent life. The implications of discovering an extra terrestrial conscious life form are immense. It will shake the entire foundations of our society. It will give us new perspectives on both the problems and pleasures of human life.

Given the vastness of the universe, and the unimaginable timescales it presents us, the discovery of alien life will no doubt give us the opportunity to see not only a totally different race, but a totally different time. The chances of finding a civilisation that has come into fruition in the past few thousand years like we have are extremely improbable. So the likelihood is that any civilisation we discover will be far, far in advance of our own.

Look at the way the world has changed in the past decade, just because of the internet. This century is expected to bring such medical and technological breakthroughs that mankind will soon become unrecognisable to its ancestors. Combine this exponential, accellerating rate of change, with the massive timescales of space. Can you imagine, what any race intelligent enough not to succumb to existential risk would become?

Now imagine what such a civilisation's internet would have evolved into. For an interstellar civilisation, an interstellar communications system would be essential. Vast amounts of data would need to be shared between star systems. Entire planets or stars would need to be used for data storage and computation.

Transfer of data would provide the biggest obstacle, given the speed limit of the universe and the vast distances presented. Sci-fi solutions such as wormholes or time travel could solve these problems. With wormholes, data could simply be sent through tears in space, with time travel, data could be sent via traditional methods, only to be sent back in time once it arrived at its destination, giving the illusion of an instantaneous transfer. Von Neumann communication probes could provide the infrastructure.

Discovering the transfer method used for such a galactic internet could enable us to at least detect its presence. It is possible though, that advanced civilisations protect themselves from "non-enlightened species" by hiding or securing the network. Perhaps, discovery of the network requires enlightenment, for example the singularity itself could provide discovery and connection methods that we would never have discovered without it. Alternatively, discovery may be extremely easy, which would almost certainly be a deliberate scenario designed to uplift us once we find it. (If an advanced civilisation doesn't want us to find it, it's highly unlikely we'll be able to.)

What applications and knowledge could such a powerful internet that spreads across the galaxy, or even the universe, bring us?