It's quite an amazing thing to be flying through space above the clouds. Jasper still relates to the sky as being something impossible for us to reach. Funny how it seems so far above what we are capable of, but it seems nearly impossible to say exactly where that point is.

I'm on the plane flying back home to Denver. I have so much work awaiting me - really, I see no end to the work that awaits me. But I love the feeling of looking foward to that work. Feeling that what I'm doing is important, even if my part often seems so very small. Does everyone feel this way? Or is it just because the work I do is impossible for me alone to fully accomplish?

Now I'm sounding a bit more arrogant that I typically like to.

Yesterday, Mike explained some things to me about computer languages and how they interact. He's built a new language to expand Congo, our crazy rapid-development data framework. I think I tend to know more about computers than the average Jane, but I haven't a degree in computer science, and there are still huge gaps in my understanding of how all of this works. But I was grateful for the conversation, and my point is really this: I'm amazed by the brain power it has taken to create the systems we use today. The average user never thinks of how the hardware and software interact to give us the results we take for granted. Hell, I rarely think of such things. But it is this which gives me hope that perhaps some geeks, with their capacity to see the larger picture, to understand how each system and part interacts with the larger systems and parts, can help us translate that understanding to other systems we live in.

Part of my thinking is influenced by finishing Songlines, which I did just today. (In time to share it with Ethan, a cool geek from Eugene who's been building WagN) Chatwin proposes that the Austrailian Songlines, used by Indigenous peoples as a roadmap of the land (and oh, so much more than that) are not unique to Australia. That perhaps all people, when we first became humans, created these Songlines as we developed language and travelled across the earth. In Australia, a person who forgets their songline has lost themselves. They have no way to interact with others or to find their way. I think of how Daniel Quinn proposes that it was the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago that transformed how we interacted with the land and others. That before then, ownership of land and people, and therefore the dominance of others, was not possible. Chatwin suggests that we are, by nature, nomadic people. What have we done to ourselves, to settle down, assert property rights and start the wars and trouble that come with attempting to dominate everything else? Did we all start out with Songlines, that assured us of who we are and where we come from; that ensure our safe passage through the land and the responsibility to provide that to others? And what have we lost in losing them?

It's hard for me to agree with people who think we are the most intellegent, most supreme species that has evolved. Instead of adapting to our environment, being a part of our environment, we have done so much to dominate it, to have some measure of power over it. And for what cost? If we continue down our current path, one half of the world's species will disappear within 50 years. We have no idea what we've done or the impact of it. Our raping of the earth and gobbling up of her resources has provided us with some certainty - we have changed it, forever. And we, as a species, may not survive that change.

I am confident that life will continue. That although the world as we've known it is changing, life will persist in some form. Whether we're a part of that form or not is left to be seen.

There are people who think that people like me, who have these thoughts are crazy. That I shouldn't have such a bleak view of the future. I recently shared with a friend my thoughts on having children, and how I believe it would be irresponsible of me at this point to bring a beautiful being into the world with the future so grim...and he became extremely annoyed, saying I shouldn't relate to the world that way.

I know I'm not the first to think these thoughts. I'm almost certain it's not the first time in human history people have imagined the end of things as we know it. But I feel compelled to do something about it. I don't know if I'll ever experience what I do as having a big impact. But I don't want to feel as if I've wasted my time here. It's such a beautiful world. I can't stand the thought of us ruining it.

We're about to land. This has taken a tangent I didn't expect, but there it is.