Friends,

I’m not sure how I came across this or how it was even possible, but I thought it was worth sharing with all of you. It provides some fascinating perspective. Give it a read and then let’s talk …

—Dean

Cerebrum-Net Upload: Thursday, October 31, 2205

Was blogging a revolution? No. It was an evolution.

It’s arrival roughly coincided with the emergence of homo electronicus migratus*—an early twenty-first century man whose life was in many ways undefinable apart from the technology (particularly internet technology) that surrounded him. Did he create the web-log (blog), or did it create him? The near inseparability of the two makes it hard to tell. What we do know is that homo electronicus co-existed for a time with his twentieth century predecessor, homo modernus, but quickly gained preeminence largely due to homo modernus’ decision to remain “unplugged�.

Having already embraced the developments of the nuclear age—i.e.: the telephone, the automobile—as essential to its existence, it appears that modernus lacked the adaptive sense of necessity to embrace cyber-reality as an authentic extension of physical reality (a defining trait for electronicus), preferring instead to view it as “virtual” and “artificialâ€?.

This is curious from our twenty-third century perspective when we consider that it was, of course, modernus’ telephone (which he could not do without) that gave birth to the Internet (which he considered a novelty, not a necessity like his phone).

Perhaps the most defining moment of separation between the two species was the emergence of the blogosphere. Pre-dated by the pithy and superficial “chat rooms� of the late 1990’s, the blog evolved in the first decade of the new millennium as an engaging, literate, interactive, and deeply personal “communion� of electronicus’ localized physical existence with the wider world. This new man began to carry his conversations, his business, his connectedness, his very life, into cyber-space—not as an artificial or alternative reality (re: virtual) but as an extension and mirror of physical reality. This created what we know as the physio/cyber life-cycle—the looping of human existence back and forth between the parallel cyber and physical worlds.

It was essentially electronicus’ entry into this cycle that formed the great gulf between himself and modernus. With each passing day, more and more of the content of electronicus’ conversations was cyber-localized, often leaving modernus (although quite unintentionally) literally “out of the loop�. Unbeknownst to modernus, often as much as half of the “current conversation� was taking place in a reality that he did not feel the need to engage. Thus, in his self-exclusion from the physio/cyber life-cycle—limiting his influence, culture, and understanding to the purely modern world—modernus yielded up his position as the dominant species.

Concurrently, entrance into the blogospere allotted electronicus a world of new opportunities to reclaim much of the connectivity, creativity, influence, individuality, literacy, and humanity that had all but disappeared in the wake of the socially fractured and dying modernus culture that once dominated western culture in late twentieth century.

*homo electronicus migratus—an evolutionary designation coined by tweny-first century futurist, Alex McManus.