If you have ever doubted the reasons for this web site, the video above is the fruit of the world that I have been warning everyone about for the last X years.

With evolution there are eras where the next version of the species overlaps the first.  Consider yourself privileged, since you are going to witness the transition.

Whether you are going to be the new digital homo sapien or legacy organic version is something you will know when you are faced with the final decision to unplug yourself from the 3 dimensional machine you call your body.

For thousands of years we have contemplated where “we” are; where the soul lives.  Today, we are peering into pandora’s box and ready to jump in.

For those of you who can’t wrap your minds around the last 4 paragraphs and extend your vision to where this is going to lead, you need not read any further.  It’s just another one of the drops in the vast ocean of signs that have led mankind to this very point.

Today we are open to the idea of connecting with each other in a digital cartoon form from our living rooms.

Resolution will increase.  Sensory inputs will develop.  Biofeedback will advance, and eventually cerebral integration will become a thing of reality.

At this point in the timeline, talking about these things to most of you seems like science fiction, but remember that  only 50 years ago if you mentioned to a person of relatively advanced intelligence that 5o years from now most of the civilized world will have 3 x 5 sheets of glass in their pockets that will connect to a worldwide reservoir of knowledge and information, transmit video phone calls, control your home, and vertically integrate into medicine, retail, and banking; they would think that you had lost your mind.

Today in most major cities, the average person carries a smart phone.  The beginnings of a new species of human being has taken root.  I’ve talked about this person before… welcome homo technologicus.

Please save your dissertation of anthropology and sociology for the classroom.  The reality is that people are changing because of technology.  That is a matter that neither anthropology or sociology are not ready for.  In fact they have both been caught with their pants down as technology has run onto the scene with a relentless sense of urgency to eviscerate most of our scientific disciplines.

The human brain has been freed from the tedious tasks that science once imposed on it, to a more creative role.  We ask the questions now and use technology to collect, calculate, render and cross section our data.

Technology not shapes our environment, our genes, our food production and every other facet of our lives.  Technology compares to Darwinian evolutionary theory, as Einstein’s relatively compares to Newtonian physics.  These discussions are contained on an entirely different plane.

Today, we will Kinect.  Tomorrow WE will be the avatar in the box.

Why not?

What kept us from coming this far?  You can’t deny that a part of you thinks it’s strange to “connect” with other people via your TV and a cartoon avatar.  Even video chat isn’t the same as an in person conversation.  We all agree on this.  But that only proves our already outdated ideology.  Just like the kids of 1910 are having a hard time wrapping their minds around the social networking craze of the new generation, or digital music… they have gotten old, as those of us who have a hard time accepting the avatar world have.

The word avatar is interesting.  In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatāra (Devanagari Sanskrit for “descent from heaven to earth”) refers to a deliberate descent of a deity (an incarnation of a deva (God) from heaven to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being (i.e., Vishnu for Vaishnavites) and is mostly translated into English as “incarnation”, but more accurately as “appearance” or “manifestation”.

So in essence the basic concept of almost every major religion.  A soul descends to the lower dimensional plane of the 3rd dimension and occupies the body.

This is a beautiful thing, since you are actually the avatar of the soul.

But here is my warning to the rest of humanity and the future.  This “thing” that is happening with technology around us will continue to evolve, and you will be faced with a decision at one point in time.  That decision will be to leave the body and live in the machine.

This decision will be very tempting indeed.  Think of the possibility of eternal life, without pain, without hunger.  Just pure consciousness beamed across the universe at the speed of light form one machine to another.  You can experience the entire universe and all the splendors it holds, and watch the ending, or remaking of it.

But just as the very definition of avatar implies, you are a in a lessor dimension.  From the 3rd dimension to the 2nd.  Experiencing the world in binary.  Music, Art and love will instantly disappear.

The final conclusion to this long story of the soul of the hairless ape will come to an end.  Those who enter the 2nd dimensional prison for ever, and those who are content with their temporary 3rd dimensional lease, not knowing what lies ahead, but willing to surrender their material being to the amalgamated energy of the universe… to go on forever, but free.

I claim no knowledge of where the soul resides.  I don’t know what lies ahead for us when we die.  I don’t have an answer for the mystical nature of what makes us human and how we create the concept of a God.  But I do know, as a  lover science, as many great scientists in the past have concluded, that these discussions cannot be answered with the tools that are bound to this 3rd dimension of ours.

Today we stand on the edge of an abyss that will take us into a new frontier.  One that I think we are ill prepared for.  At a time where we have much unfinished business in our third dimensional lives, we are going to escape into the second.  I argue that this is irresponsible.

We put so much effort into entering the avatar world, yet we still have human beings suffering in the world.  We wait in line for our next best smart phone, but we tolerate injustice in the name of religion.  We pay thousands of dollars every year for entertainment (cable TV, game boxes, internet service) yet we can’t share our financial resources to better life on our planet, for our species, or our fellow earthlings.

Welcome to the final chapter of homo sapien sapien.  Homo technologicus has arrived.

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