Internet Hypnosis

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you’re living in a forest without fibre optic cable buried under soft green moss. Now open your eyes and imagine your eyes are closed. Ok, now boot up your ultra-slim laptop. Remember, you are no longer in the forest, but in a large metropolis, at a café, with no soft green moss but with wireless Internet and passable burgers. Walk up to the waitress and ask her, politely and without appearing to be under hypnosis, what the password is, then enter it into your ultra-slim laptop.

Picture yourself on a boat on a river with marmalade skies and transmission speeds of 20 terabits per second. Now re-boot your computer and hold your breath for five seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. When I snap my fingers twice you will still not be able to send that Gmail to your mother. Now visualise your mother at home in Iowa, waiting for your email, knitting a scarf. It’s ok to cry. Write a micro blog about what makes a good cry.

I want you to think about hacking now. Don’t be afraid. Let yourself go. Nothing is sacred. Yes, that is someone’s email account you have accessed. Now imagine that you have hacked into your mother’s email account. You see that she signs off “With much love always” in her emails to your sister, while for you she uses the all-weather “Regards”. How does that make you feel? You are no longer on a boat on a river with marmalade skies, are you?

Imagine you are Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo! On second thought, imagine you are Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba Group. On third thought imagine you are a combination of Jack Ma, Carol Bartz and Softbank. Begin strangling yourself. When you regain consciousness, you will see The Light and know how to steal a prized asset from foreign investors in broad daylight.

You are now journeying to a vast desert. You are in an oasis, and there is a black object, a giant black box, in the middle of the oasis. The giant box is like a shrine that people walk around on holy days or a millstone in a medieval granary turned by serfs with wooden levers. It is the Keyword Oracle! If you happen to write a filthy dirty disgusting word or one that begins with the letter T, an arm will reach out from the Keyword Oracle and twist your ear.

You are feeling very sleepy. Look at the pocket watch as it swings like a pendulum. From now on, every time you hear the word ‘source code’ you will become very defensive and hop up and down on one leg.

You are entering the deepest hypnotic state now, vulnerable and weak. If I were a bad person, I could rifle the contents of your purse now, or make all sorts of perverse post-hypnotic suggestions, but I am going to limit my suggestions to search engines. From this day forward, you will have an extreme aversion to any search that implies independent thought or action.

We are making excellent progress! You are still under hypnosis. I want you to close your eyes and relax and imagine you are deep below the sea, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You spot a cable running along the seabed. It is glowing like an electric eel. There are no breaks in the cable but I want you to believe it is severely damaged. When you wake up, you will believe you are an electric eel.

Seriously, transport yourself to the summit of a mighty mountain. You have altitude sickness and you are gasping for air. In the valley below you can see many people, happy people going about their daily toil, making things and making love, whereas all you have is a VPN and a protein shake.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. When I count to 10 you will be at peace with yourself and the world around you, only you won’t be able to stream video. From now on, when you hear the phrase ‘triple network convergence’ you will giggle and pat your belly.