In 1989 when I was 14 years old I was interviewed by CNN about the future of the internet. The Berlin Wall had just fallen and it was a time of global celebration. The internet was in its developmental phase and a test node had been set up in our high school connected to another in Vladivostok. It was a special “pen pal” program where Russian and American students corresponded with each other using the emergent technology. Every day we stood in a long line waiting for our turn to receive a short message from our pen pals from a single terminal. Then we wrote our responses out in longhand and carefully typed them and pressed send. Now it’s an activity I do every day, sometimes every hour, but in the late 80’s it was transformative.
The camera crew worked busily in the classroom, trying to get newsworthy soundbites from the kids. I waited towards the end of the line thinking carefully about what I would say. It was something like: “The distance has vanished, and we can see how much we have in common. There’s a lot of movies where Russians are the bad guys, but now, when I watch those movies I think, ‘some of them are my friends.’” Sure enough, that was the clip they liked and I was on the news that night, at least that’s what my friends said; I couldn’t watch it because we didn’t have cable.
Working with EOS Dublin has made me realize that we’re at the same kind of transformative moment now. There’s a reason that there are so many comparisons to launching a rocket, or putting a man on the moon. We’re doing something that has never been done before, and the incredible thing is that this accomplishment can’t be claimed by any corporation or government agency, it is the work of a global community.
Things are changing rapidly, every day Sharif Bouktila shares some news that takes me by surprise, and I don’t understand every detail of Sam Noble’s technical updates, but I understand where we are going. It’s an end to the feeling of being survielled by your own smartphone. It’s a completely new system where corporations don’t own your digital life. We’re working towards greater freedom for knowledge, communication and information.
Watching Ajit Pai dancing on youtube while destroying net neutrality this year, that freedom seemed to shrink, but being on the EOS Dublin team, I feel like I’m 14 again, waiting in line for my chance at that single terminal and the thrill of pressing send.
Isaac Peterson, EOS Dublin Marketing
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