“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the e-Office…”

Few can argue against the idea that the invention of the microprocessor has forever altered the evolutionary path of mankind. With the exception of fire, no other discovery has so quickly and completely inserted itself into every aspect of our existence. Computes continue to change not only how we interact with our world, but the definition of what our world consists of. Our entire concept of what a thing is has been rewritten, and is continually altered based on technology improvements. In essence, computers have completely redefined what is, and what isn’t.

In 1986 my entire music collection consisted of tapes and records, their cases/sleeves, the shelves they were stacked on, as well as the space in my bedroom where the shelves were placed. This menagerie filled a gap roughly 3’ x 4’ x 1.5’ and weighed close to 150 lbs. With each new format released, my collection shrank in weight and required space without any decrease in content. Flash forward to now. My music collection is roughly 100,000 songs from several thousand albums. The strange part is, it doesn’t really exist in any physical form. Sure there are some ones and zeroes in a mostly non-existent place, riddled with electrons that make up the data of my music collection, but for the most part, my audio library doesn’t exist in any 3 dimensional sense. It doesn’t end there, several hundred books, most of my movies, 3 boxes of recipe cards, and nearly everything in my filing cabinet have vanished into thin air as well. Not to say that I can’t access them whenever I want, rather I no longer have to lift, store, or maintain them in a real sense.

In the future who knows what else will join my media in the unreal cyberreality it exists in today. Scientists constantly use digital copies of matter, DNA, and even the basic forces that allow us to exist in the first place to run simulations, or create electronic models. Who knows? In one hundred years or so, the digital realm may reclassify what life is in the first place, just as soon as we fix that global warming thing.