"After all, there have already been many different versions of the internet; go back far enough, and the internet is simply part of nature. An elephant’s stomping foot, the clicking of a sperm whale, the chemical signals released into the air by sagebrush, all of which send meaningful messages over a long distance. “Throughout the living world, telecommunication is more likely the norm than the exception.” Mystics understood this; they have always assumed that something like the internet already existed, in their vision of a “system of hidden filaments or threads that bind all things."