The global spread of technologies which enable people to see, hear, know and act at a distance are considered by Virilio, in his more gnostic moments, as a kind of demiurgic recasting of the world. The profane destiny of humanity is to resurrect within its collective psyche an archaic dream of divinity and become god-like – immanent in everything, everywhere, all at once. When this happens, and humanity is cocooned inside a world-wide web of manufactured perceptions, like a jet pilot speeding far above the earth, then there is no longer an outside able to position our inhabitation of global space-time. The accident restores an awareness of the reality of the world. As spotter planes search for the debris of Flight MH370 in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, they are engulfed in clouds, dodging rain and typoons, frustrated by high-speed winds and currents, conscious that below them lies the vastness of an undiscovered and completely alien planet. See http://www.newscientist.com/special/gaia