Leaving the Harbor

Here we go. Are you ready? Grab a rail and hold on tight!

Have you cruised on a boat? How did it start? Probably in the harbor. Once you're all aboard, the engine revs and the boat starts to move. But you start slowly. You're just in the harbor, you can't go full throttle.

The first few moments you cruise at a crawl, past boats and docks. As you get closer to open water, your speed picks up. The motor's hum lifts from a trundle to a purr. A little louder, a little more kick. You feel the boat rock for the first time. Just a little sway, left to right, enough to catch your attention. Woah.

A bit more speed. Breeze hits your face. Hair starts to splay. Your heart adds a beat. Now we're moving.

Here it comes, the break wall. The thick row of rocks looms like a starting gun. Past that line lays the open ocean. No more speed limits, time to fly. The engine revs. You're closing in. Really moving, boat rocking, hair flying, wind bustling. Here we go. Are you ready? Grab a rail and hold on tight!

That's us, right now. Mankind, worldwide. For scores of centuries we trundled through the harbor. The world changed slowly, like a faint breeze we barely felt. History boasts of revolutions in agriculture and industry. But these happened across dozens of lifetimes, not within one. Societal upheaval arrived over thousands of years, then hundreds. Now, things are different. The Information Age unfolds in months, not millennia.

110 billion lives have been lived. We're the lucky few (billion) who get to leave the harbor. What's it like on the open ocean? What's our top speed? And what happens after that? Can we handle the swells, stomach the sway, and hold tight enough when the the chop gets heavy?

Nobody knows. Are you ready? Here we go. Grab a rail and hold on tight!...!...!...!...!...!