The Struggle for Devirtualization

Have you ever migrated 1.5 million lifeforms? When I was a kid my mom was a prairie steward. One time I got to help move insects from one prairie to another. Maybe in kindergarten. I captured them with nets and tubes. Then, miles away on yet another golden hill, we let them go. Clouds of triumphant of freedom. Quite literally escaping extinction.

(Would aliens do the same for us?)

Devirtualize. Verb. To invert the paradigm of digital-first, physical-second. And virtualization was always second-nature. So many of us leapt in with both feet.

(After all, we grew up here.)

Somewhere, months later, I saw "online-ness" offered as another axis with to gauge your employees. 21st century flare minimums, etcetera.

(But then what?)

Now, I go into the "office" once a week. Tuesday is the day. I have two accountability buddies. It is good for each of us. Devirtualize. Sometimes we all pull up. Sometimes two. Sometimes only one. Last Tuesday I was alone.

(But yesterday-Tuesday I got to interact with humans! Isaac and I hacked the Gibson. Arthur played Aerials and Chop Suey on drums. Jack shredded bass and spoke of distant horizons. Erik plotted empires.)

"Office" in scare-quotes because Output HQ is the most comfortable professional domicile within which I've ever had the pleasure of conducting business. Drum machines and instruments just sorta float around in slow eddies which can only map to employee devirtualization-cycles.

(Ah, that photoshoot three weeks ago is now one-third tucked away...)

Those who entered isolation earliest are more likely to leave the latest. It is simple - they were the most paranoid and/or most at-risk so they're more likely to be the more cautious and alert.

(Just because I've seen every science fiction movie ever made doesn't make my paranoia any less valid, thanks.)

But why did we have to migrate all the insects in the first place? What was wrong with the prairie? Simple. It was in the path of a subdivision, a highway, some strip malls. It was in the path of the American dream.

(For each dream you destroy, three more shall spring, and each shall be more smoldering than all previous.)