The Age of Text

Posts from the Near Future

Thanks to the efforts of our physicists, this letter can be sent back in time, to you. The bandwidth required is high, but hopefully, the distortions will cease with the going of this letter. We have seen our future, we are living yours. This letter marks the coming of the second Age of Text for us as it marks the beginning of your first.

As recorded in our books of the past, it all began with the dying of the internet. A surge, unlike any before, wiped out every known and unknown server to man. Civilization was plunged into the dark ages with the death of the internet — the source of the attack remaining a mystery. (For how could they discover a hidden knowledge without the internet?)

As you would imagine, the world united and moaned the loss. A few servers were created, trying to recapture the glory of the internet, but all was lost. The World Wide Web had been severed.

People, children and adults, humans of all shapes and sizes felt the void left behind by the internet. An emptiness, the lack of information, the loss of instant gratification — several humans committed suicide. The virtual reality had ceased to exist and not all could turn to the physical reality for comfort.

But humans will always learn to adapt. They found they had time, much more than they could ever imagine. The lack of information pushed people to go to places they had never before. Libraries grew crowded, newspaper sales increased. The stocks of tech companies fell, as those of publisher’s rose. People bought books again. People read books again. It was the turning of the age.

Some of the tech-wiz who could not let the internet go, rebuilt the servers, recreated what was once a breathing, living organism. Always growing always devouring, but now curbed to low bandwidth and lack of enthusiasm. It was a slower internet, a much more minimal internet. No more could images, moving images, sounds, and other data-rich media be transmitted. The bandwidth was too low for that. All that could be sent was text — crisp and concise text, heavy with meaning and implication. Only the rich got access to additional bandwidth which could be used for images, but even then, the slow speeds frustrated and the feature never got popular.

There were unseen results to the rise of such an internet that relied so heavily on text. The people who could write — write well in a crisp language — and be able to convey ideas were sought after. The bandwidth was too low to allow words to be spent flippantly.

Writers banded together, once they were known as bloggers, but they christened a new name for themselves: Wordsmiths. Sharing stories, telling tales, using their flare of words to inspire and inform. They were the new world leaders, and through the use of the limited internet they reached out and changed the world.

As more and more people started to read, the need for images grew less. Humanity was changing, mindsets were changing, imagination was at an all time high. There was no stopping the tide of words, and the world stood poised at the pinnacle of change.

We ushered ourself into the Age of Text. Soon, other forms of media were discontinued. Our civilization had reached a higher set of purpose, a higher mindset, one that was open and accepting.

The problems of the world were solved, slowly. Precise words creating a clear communication channel between people. As more and more wordsmiths joined in, the ideas only grew in number and we found that almost all the problems we had ever faced could be solved.

The Age of Text was — no, is — a glorious age to be alive in. Until, that is, the gates of time were reimagined by our physicists and the fluctuations in our own time stream began. They were slight, but we glimpsed what we call the “Other Future” where the internet had never died — a world full of information where no one bothered to read. Images and moving images stood out like live hallucinations, and the human mind grew slack with the lack of imagination. Humanity was lost in a bubble of nonsensical videos, advertisements, and sounds. The intellectual maturity of the world was lost.

The physicists predicted that this must be due to a time anomaly, one that has not yet occurred through time. We looked back to our own beginnings, our past, and we found the answer.

Embedded in these words is a program that will crash the closest servers you are operating on. The internet must die, for the sake of humanity to reach a greater height. We have done what needed to be done. We hope to see you on the other side, as we usher and welcome you to the Age of Text.