Transit

Deus ex Machina

by Chris Ogilvie

Last week I sent an email to God. I was upset about the state of the world and I'd had a bad day so I zapped it off to god@heaven.org. I'm still waiting a reply. OK only joking. The point is the World Wide Web seems to embrace so much of life, why not the ultimate divine being as well?

The internet revolution of the late 90s happened while Uranus and then Neptune (from 1998) were in the technical sign of Aquarius and Pluto was in multinational Sagittarius. It turbo charged the trend towards the global village and will be seen by future historians as being in the same league as the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions in terms of social, economic and political change. We’re living through it right now! The Information Revolution.

The creators of the World Wide Web were Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, a Gemini twinned with an Aquarian. What else? Tim Berners-Lee (born in London on 8th June 1955) has a nodal axis in Sagittarius- Gemini which pretty well describes an international information system made possible through a common language. Jupiter, which rules his north node conjuncts Uranus, the revolutionary technocrat. His Venus in rulership makes a tight square to Pluto; he helped change how we relate to others. Robert Cailliau (born on 26th January 1947 in Tongeren Belgium) has an Aquarian sun and Mercury which aspect dynamic Mars, business like Saturn and powerhouse Pluto. His Venus in Sagittarius receives a tight opposition from Uranus, which is cool for a man who helped connect people through technology. His nodal axis is the mirror image of Tim's; they had a destiny together.

A challenge for internet users is the Jupitarian problem of sheer overload of information. Google, the world's most popular search engine trawls through billions of pages for us in fractions of a second. It's awesome. First incorporated on 7th September 1998, Google aptly has a service-orientated Virgo sun and north node, given that it has a mission statement “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Mercury, ruler of the north node conjuncts it and squares Pluto, which in turn squares the nodal axis. Google has helped transform how a sixth of the world's population accesses information, shops, meets people, exchanges ideas, and more. Its power is immense. There is a whole industry dedicated to the black art of discovering how to work your website up Google's ratings. Google is now collecting data on what each of us searches for in order to target their advertising. We are being watched.

Google's founders (now billionaires) were Stanford University graduates Larry Page (born 26th March 1973 in Lansing Michegan) and Sergey Brin ( born 27th August 1973 in Moscow). They both have Jupiter in Aquarius in aspect to Mars in a practical earth sign. Larry's pioneering Aries sun opposes transformational Pluto. (nb: Robert Cailliau also has a Pluto-sun opposition.) Sergey also has a fire sun (Leo), and with a square to his sun from Neptune, is a visionary. Pluto is strongly placed in his chart too, making a partile conjunction to Venus in rulership and square the nodal axis. Both have a Capricorn north node, a sign that loves to structure and organise!

The Internet has revolutionised our lives but also has more subversive uses. Information is power and Pluto's journey through the international, knowledge- orientated sign of Sagittarius is evident. Students can cheat by downloading essays and theses. Music and film piracy is rife through file sharing. Terrorists can access bomb making know how and materials on line. Drugs, babies, transplant organs can all be traded. The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the net, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries’ use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity.

Neptune is still travelling through Aquarius and boundaries continue to be eroded by the Web. Through Ebay we can trade all over the world. We can look for love way beyond our neighbourhood and national borders. Knowledge is not longer confined to specialists and obscure archives. Neptune has taken us into the world of virtual reality. We have virtual organisations, classrooms, clinics, chat rooms, shopping malls, banks. People don’t need to leave home to work. This ‘cyberworld’ is at your fingertips. However, with weaker boundaries we are vulnerable. Our computers need firewalls, and virus checkers to protect us from data loss, identity theft, hackers, and malicious damage. Cyber scams and spam clutter up our in-boxes.

The Internet is truly Aquarian in that it's not owned by anyone; it's a technological facility in which anyone can surf and publish. It gives Power to the People. Patients now go to their GPs with sheaves of information about their illnesses. Interest groups, however obscure, can form globally. It connects individuals and communities through the great computer in the sky. Through the Web, politics are becoming more international; which is essential to our survival as a planet as so many of our problems - climate change, third world poverty, diminishing natural resources - can only be solved on a global scale. The Web is hard, if not impossible, to control, though in China the Government does try (aided and abetted by Google).

Soon Pluto will move into Capricorn. Those structures and establishments which have been slowly dissolved at their foundations by Neptune's long passage through Capricorn and Aquarius may fall. Time to email God?