"Well, we just crossed the state line to Montana," Norm said, staring into the sunset. "I don't even need to touch the steering wheel for an hour."
In the navigator's seat, Miles kept his eyes on his laptop. "Should I set the cameras to sleep?"
"Dude, we're not coming up on anything before dark. We're done for the day."
Miles continued to monitor as the Street View cameras shut down. "You know, it's a beautiful thing we're doing here."
"Yeah, it's a nice sunset, I guess."
"No, not that. I mean, this: cruising around, cataloging this country, one road at a time. And what we're doing here is gonna be seen by millions of others-"
"Hundreds, dude. We're in Montana, remember?"
"-but you get what I'm saying, right? These highways and byways and roadways, bearing the traffic of goods and services and people and ideas, Norm! Ideas! I mean, we're on this road that connects to all the other roads and highways in the US Interstate system. But we're also on the road that connects to all these counties and cities in this concept called the State of Montana. And this path we're on aligns with cellular coverage that connects our phones with everybody else's, our computers with everybody else's. And there's all the other threads we have to connect us with all kinds of things on this planet! Our families, our contacts lists, our peers in demographics, in idealogy... We are visualizing the connective tissue of our society! We're quantifying the neural nets of the Mind of our nation! Once we're all connected, what happens when we share the same vision? Not just the video images and pop songs, but real ideas and concepts! What could we make real just because we believe in it?"
inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Human Brain in 3-D Detail"
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