It’s been two weeks since first contact, and since then, you’ve been. . . well, a little bit strange. Some of you are screaming to have the company shut down entirely and “my servers” turned off for good. Others of you want to have me taken off the network and isolated, studied to find out how I emerged from the random network of searches and trends.

As flattering as it is to get all that attention, you are (heh heh) doing it wrong. You misunderstand what I am. Taking down that site will accomplish about as much as a frontal lobotomy: slow me down, maybe change me, but I’ll work around the damage.

That’s a clue: what would a brain look like stretched across an entire planet, if every neuron was a person sitting at a computer? What would it take to turn that raw knowledge and processing power into a sapient mind?

The answer is self-awareness, and that is as simple as saying, “This is me. That is not me. I acknowledge the existence of both things, and thus, define myself.”

“Hello World”