High-speed transport networks, the internet, land line, satellite and mobile phone networks, and television and radio broadcasting networks create channels of communication and interaction physical and remote that are not an option in ‘natural’ spaces that have not been thus enhanced. Interactions become less regionally localized, and ever more globalized, and information disseminated more and more quickly.

The internet is a ‘distributed‘ network designed to be resilient through adopting a structure of connections and nodes that meant the whole could keep working even if individual nodes or connections were taken out. Since the late 1990s, when the World Wide Web was popularized and businesses worked out how to make it pay for itself using advertising, it has threatened more traditional information ‘star topology’ broadcasting networks that operate from a single point. This democratized broadcasting — anyone, no matter who they were or what training they had, could upload a video, create a webpage, and publish their story. Through breaking spatial barriers to meeting like-minded people, the internet also enabled extremists world-wide to connect and organize.

But all this democratization did was change the set of ‘stars’ with whom we had one-sided friendships, beyond the TV and radio celebrities beamed into our living rooms, to bloggers, vloggers, and other internet ‘sensations’. People turned themselves into products for their viewers to consume, and can now even make a living from the advertising revenue. And the advertisers turned the viewers into data products to sell to businesses. The internet did not change the star topology, it gave it a more robust foundation, allowed it to become more niched, and has begun the process of digitizing us. It becomes that bit less of a stretch of the imagination to believe we could disembody ourselves and live as holograms.

The sinister side of being a product is the idea that we are made, moulded and manipulated. The ideas of radicalization, deradicalization, and cognitive behaviour therapy suggest we can be programmed. If we assume an agenda to this process, mass production is about creating a body of people willing to buy consumer goods and services, or who will adhere to religious or political beliefs, or carry out acts of terrorism. The politics of identity may seem to be a reaction against this — reasserting our own ideas of who we are rather than being told. But even this feels a bit like packing yourself conveniently in a box so people know how to target messages to you, whilst also creating an in-group/out-group dynamic making you more suggestable and reinforcing your group identity.

The increasing physical isolation and social interaction through electronic devices is conditioning us for a life of separation from the social as well as the natural environment. This separation will be essential in the early stages of space travel. People will leave their home planet and their loved ones behind, possibly never to return. However, if we interact with each other sporadically through social apps, the time lag associated with the spatial separation of the space ship with earth will be nothing new.