• notabot@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    Sometimes I stop to think about the fact that a tiny electrical impulse in my brain can cause my fingers to move and press buttons on my keyboard, which in turn causes larger, but still small electrical impulses to trigger a shiny rock we trapped lightning in to do an immense number of calculations, to send a stream of further impulses to my network router, which sends them on to another router, and another, and on and on, each step might go via a wire, or radio, or the flashing of a tiny light, or even bounce off of a satellite in space and back to another router, until it eventually finds it’s way to a server, which does huge numbers of further calculations, then sends impulses back to me, and also to other servers, via just as remarkable a route, which in turn send impulses down wires and optical fibres and bouncing off of satellites until one of those streams of impulses gets to your router, where it gets sent on to your shiny lightning rock, which performs many calculations and causes a pattern of light and dark dots to appear in front of you, which cause a series of tiny electrical impulses in your brain, that you perceive have meaning.

    The natural world is filled with magic and wonder, but this is a magic we designed and built ourselves.