In the same way, Star Trek helped us to imagine the idea of the cell phone and Bluetooth wireless device. It also helped us to deal with a future of limitless horizons and exploration found on the many social sites of the Internet. Today, the interface of the laptop is the viewing screen, and the hardware is the spaceship. The browser helps us travel to different universes at nearly the speed of light, and each new website we reach becomes a new planet.

Exploring space as a pilot has already occurred. Our spaceship is the computer, the expanding boundaries of time and space that the information space of the Internet is our Universe.

We cannot explore this space without our robots, our search engines drive our spaceship to new places. We are seeking out new life, new civilizations -- where those civilizations are data sets, value chains, new content, new ideas.

And our spaceships get dented easily in space -- they are susceptible to viruses as easily as space vessels are susceptible to pock marks by dust and grit. Our dust and grit is spam and other garbage. Our space is full of empty space and spam. It is a Darwinian space, where value is created and destroyed in a frictionless environment.

Wormholes

We have become astronauts in a bubble, exploring space. Those bubbles are our iPods, vehicles, and phones, television screens and computers. We use these to teleoperate each other's bodies, and jump in time/space from Point A to Point B, from Denver to Boston, Elvis to The Shins, Google to Amazon. 

In the universe of the Internet, these points and destinations are different planets -- some larger than others -- each with their own gravitational pulls. The spaceship is our computer, the expanding boundaries of time and space that the information space of the Internet is our Universe.

We cannot explore this space without our robots. Our search engines drive our spaceship to new places. We are seeking out new life, new civilizations -- where those civilizations are data sets, value chains, new content, new ideas.

We are explorers now. In search of the next greatest piece of entertainment, the best relaxation, the most delicious restaurant, the highest rated object, the most informative book, the shortest distance between Point A and Point B, the most stylish way to get there, the furthest escape. Along the way, we leave trails of our findings to our friends -  the freshest joke, (which is usually a combination of former objects or ideas, torn up and remixed, or recycled (Rick Astley)), the coolest item, the best prosthetic, the coolest exoskeleton. 

There are drawbacks to our fierce travels. Our spaceships are susceptible to viruses as easily as space vessels are susceptible to pock marks by dust and grit. Our dust and grit is spam and other garbage. Space is full of emptiness and spam. It is a Darwinian space, where value is created and destroyed in a frictionless environment. We vote for the next piece of content with the back button. In doing so, we extinguish life.