Imagine the earth, suspended in space. The nightside, for preference, and let your imagination have a sensitive enough camera to pick up, well, everything.

Every streetlight, every car’s headlights passing below. The thrum of electrical lines, the flurry of data passing through fiberoptic networks at impossible speeds.

Zoom out, but keep the resolution. Envision the whole network of electromagnetic chaos that covers the land (and the sea, for very few areas are not blanketed with microwave and radio transmissions). Watch the power and data flow back and forth, along channels more chaotic and complex than anything any spider could have ever have constructed. The entire planet, covered with a lacework of data and energy. A few tentatively exploring tendrils stretching from the surface, into the silicon minds of orbital satellites.

Millions of information junctions, communicating with each other as dictated by people who haven’t even an idea of how big a system they’re part of. The largest network ever seen.