Beside their shared modern origins, of the many similarities between the internet and ufology, both concern communication: between humans, between humans and aliens, between humans and machines, between machines themselves. Communication concerns the known and the unknown, the impulsive and the intentional, and the sayable and the obscure, which cannot be put into words. On the surface, digital communication concerns signals, with humans, in the language of cybernetics, that function like nodes caught up in feedback loops across biotic and machinic networks. It happens at vast distances but also in immediate and visceral spaces, right in our minds, where other people, and increasingly also artificial agents, are experienced as stimuli.
Yet, in a more profound sense, digital communication also concerns our place in the vast cosmos. Could the internet's existence be evidence that the universe is immoral or evil? Or is it a mere tool, reducible to historical and social conditions, which can produce both evil and goodness in the world? And what about us, the users? Are we moved by free will or mindlessly following the oscillation of the stars or the whispers of machines? Are we humans unique or just another "mode" of communication, on a continuum with computers? Are we alone or is anything else out there, inhuman, lurking, watching? Ufology as a framework for thinking about the internet in light of these questions requires a whole volume of its own.
In the early 1990s, engineer and writer Liu Cixin created a computer simulation in which each potential intelligent civilization in the universe was simplified into a single point. At its most baroque, "he programmed 350,000 civilizations within a radius of 100,000 light years and made his 286 computer work for hours to calculate the evolution of these civilizations. . . . [T]he final conclusion . . . formed the basis and shape of his world view." [Peregrine magazine] This worldview, informed by game theory, comes down to the brutal idea that the universe functions like a cosmic war machine. The simulation showed that mortal conflict between alien civilizations is unavoidable. Attempting contact with other civilizations is inherently naive and dangerous, and those who speak up draw undue attention to themselves, risking death.
Liu's "dark forest theory" has it that the universe is abundant with intelligent life, but remains eerily silent, because smart civilizations stay quiet to avoid detection. Because transparent communication that would reveal one's location is dangerous, obfuscation or flat-out silence is the only intelligent behavior. Consequently, when we humans use our technologies to attempt first contact, hoping that we are not alone in the universe, and that our civilization is recognized for its technical prowess, or that our great cosmic loneliness might vanish, we are like "a stupid child called humanity, who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting 'Here I am! Here I am!'" [The Dark Forest]
Whereas previous human cultures cultivated both communication and contemplation, digital culture is expressive, interactive, and reactive in its very essence.
If we think about the cosmos and the computer together once more, the question now is this: how does the internet, where communication is compulsive and constant, practically synonymous with all social life as such, fit within the dark forest theory? According to its logic, if the internet was an intelligent technology, it would perpetuate silence, contemplation, regulation, homeostasis, and encryption. But whereas previous human cultures cultivated both communication and contemplation, digital culture is expressive, interactive, and reactive in its very essence. Whether responding to messages or reacting bodily to what appears on our screens, we are compelled to reply, as if our preconscious impulses were being pulled and tugged at.
Even when we are not speaking, our engagement is input for the network. William Davies calls this "the reaction economy": "each individual reaction is one more item of information thrown back into the network, in search of counter-reactions." This is not just because of social media, which "are a tiny sliver of the internet, yet they are what we mean when we speak of the internet, as they are where the life is on the internet." [The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is] It also encompasses the most frequent type of communication online, which involves the machines that are listening in. As Trevor Paglen notes, most digital content is produced by and for machines, with human-to-human communications a shrinking subset. Whether we call them algorithms, agents, or AIs, computers co-create and co-inhabit with us the virtual spaces that might appear empty of anyone but humans.
While the dark forest theory might be about extraterrestrial signals, it also posits some general ideas about communication and its essential dangers, proposing to us that silence and deception are the measures of intelligence.
We have coined many names for what the internet is: the rhizome, the distributed mind, the public sphere, the cyberspace, the digital frontier, the information superhighway, the cloud, the digital swamp, the panopticon, the meat grinder, the hive mind, the Tower of Babel.
The internet is also a dark forest.