Far Beyond The Stars: The Archives

Written by Everett Bogue | Twitter makes your world breathe.

There’s been a lot of uncertainty in my life lately, which has made me think about the ways in which I’ve practiced in order to exist in a state of uncertainty without allowing situations to develop into negative situations.

The world is changing at a rapid pace. I know this because I see how technology is accelerating our cultural evolution with my own eyes. I know because when I look within myself I see how fast my internal sense of being is shifting.

I know because when I look outward I see people who can breathe, and I see those who are locking up in face of change.

The ones who can breathe are thriving. The ones who aren’t trained in embracing change are locking up, shutting down, and turning off.

Our first reaction to uncertainty might not always be the most healthy, or even beneficial. We want to search for security when faced with an overwhelming change, security often looks like a box. We throw ourselves into the box, the idea of what we’re supposed to cherish as ‘being safe’ as a way of protecting ourselves.

The box isn’t protection though, it’s a temporary prison. The change is still going around outside, you’ve just shut down your senses so you can’t feel it anymore.

The box can look like many things. The box can be trying to make plans to get past the fact that you have no idea what will happen. The box can be reacting in anger, jealousy, rage, placing blame on others, the external world, for allegedly causing you harm. The box can be ignoring that there’s any uncertainty at all. The box can be as simple as saying ‘it’s not my job to deal with the situation that’s in front of me.’

The longer you’re in the box, the more it will hurt when you come out.

The reality is that no one is ever causing you harm. The world is fluid, and change is the only constant. When we cling, to an idea, to an expectation, to a person, to a place, we simply end up causing ourselves more suffering.

We’re told by society everywhere, on the TVs, movies, books, etc that we need to control our lives. Everything needs to be in nice, clean, orderly rows. A job is supposed to be a job, a man is supposed to be a man, an email is supposed to be an email, a definition is supposed to be a definition, a marriage is supposed to be forever, and a btw why not go get a house in the suburbs and a two cars for the garage?

That was never our destiny, we know that because when we try those things they don’t feel right. Security makes us tired.

When we cling to the idea of security it makes us want to drink an entire bottle of Jäger and puke on ourselves. Security makes us want to turn off our Internet and throw that glass vase our aunt gave us that we didn’t want against our kitchen wall.

I’m writing this from a place of existing in uncertainty, I know because these days I’m not sure where I’ll be sleeping at night. I jumped on a plane to Seattle, and ended up in Boulder –which ended up being the best last minute decision in my life.

The reality of uncertainty is that it is actually the most rewarding state for humans to exist in. In an uncertain world, days can seem like weeks or months in the space/time continuum. In an uncertain world, ideas come at the speed of light. In an uncertain world, you can put your feet down in any city without a plan and you’ll survive, thrive, and discover the depths in yourself and others.

In a certain world, years can blink past in an instant. For me, the last month or so of uncertainty has felt like one thousand years.

[Status Update:] Last week I made a brief mention that the minimalism movement was coming to a close (ahem, “Fuck Minimalism“.) This caused a whole bunch of interesting reactions from all over the web –dozens of blog posts, thousand of tweets. My favorite is Josh’s well-thought-out essay on how the leadership of movements shift over time.

Some complained of not having a voice in the conversation. If you don’t have a voice, it’s because you aren’t on Twitter and/or don’t have your own blogging platform. No problems, only solutions: get on Twitter so you have a voice — not just here, but in the world. A tweet can be 10x the power of a blog comment. A blog post can be 100-1000x the power of a blog comment.

This blog doesn’t have comments because I want to encourage you to use more powerful broadcast channels to communicate.

I’m only able to engage in certain mediums (mainly Twitter) because I spend most of my day in the world learning and engaging with real human faces and bodies.

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The biggest question for many people seems to be simple: if minimalism is over, why are we still living out of backpacks and having a great time? I’ll attempt to answer that question in this blog post.

There’s been a lot of talk lately in the circles I frequent about human 2.0, cyborgs and augmented humanity. For awhile I decided to try and call this new type of human a cyborg, but the problem with using that word to define a movement is as @mikeschu said: “it brings up images of Robocop.”

People don’t want to look like machines, so the term cyborg (while more correct than you would think) alienates them and you.

So, I’m shifting gears and turning to the term Eric Schmidt (the soon to be former CEO of Google) used at DLD2011: augmented humanity. We’re essentially still humans, it’s just that some of us have access and the ability to use superhuman mental tools, and others are being left behind or caught up in the noise.

Truthfully, augmented humanity looks very much like regular humanity. All of the changes are happening in the backend.

I’ve been delving deeper into the implications of augmented humanity on the Letter.ly. As I noted earlier on the blog a few times, I can only really talk about surface information here on the public blog. Teaching advanced mental cybernetics requires a commitment from both the teacher and the student –the uninitiated can be damaged by the information overload.

Here’s a brief quote from Kit Eaton‘s Fast Company article on Schmidt’s talk to bring you up to speed on the huge changes taking place in how we interact with our world. The entire article is not long if you want to learn more.

From Fast Company: “Computers, Schmidt thinks, can, when used ubiquitously and interactively and with cloud-like access to remote supercomputer powers can give us “senses” we didn’t know were possible. “Think of it as augmented humanity” he suggested.”

[Please note that Eric Schmidt talks about all of these changes taking place “in the future” to be safe (so people don’t panic about Google’s tremendous power over our culture — IMO a good influence.) Reality is that for a large and growing percentage of us these changes have already taken place or will very soon.]

One of the key points that Schmidt brought up is that children now only have two states of being: asleep and online. There are no new disconnected humans being brought into this world — kids are being wired in from an incredibly early age to be part of collective consciousness. We will be blown away by the tremendous power that children have over the world — my generation’s power over the Internet will pale in comparison to the next.

We can try and run from this idea –and many are running. We can turn off the Internet, put our fists in our ears and scream “lalalalala” in an attempt to deny that we were assimilated into a world-wide super-organism.

The problem is that denying it is just going to make your life miserable, because increasingly the people who are fluent in the language of modern cybernetics are racing past those who are not in their ability to achieve amazing things.

The ability to achieve amazing things using the expanded mental tools available to augmented humanity are directly related to why we stopped caring about physical objects.

The reality is that you didn’t become minimalist because you wanted to, you became minimalist because of human evolution.

The adoption of technology gave you instant access to everything, instant knowledge of any location, instant ability to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world began to make stuff look like tremendous burden. This is the shift that Amber Case describes in her Ted Talk from physical tools to mental tools.

So we just got rid of it all and took off for a world-wide adventure the likes of which humanity has never seen.

This is why I’m taking The Art of Being Minimalist off the market on February 11th 2011, because it simply isn’t accurate anymore. It was at the time, but we’ve evolved past the understanding that I had when I wrote the e-book a year ago.

Anyone living out of a backpack traversing the world, exploding minds and bodies in this new world of endless ideas isn’t a minimalist at all. You’re an augmented human, a hybrid child of technology and biology.

…and you’ve got some crazy potential to do amazing things. I can’t wait to see what you’re up to next.

You’re really fraking beautiful too.

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There are three subscription options for this blog now.

1. (the best) is to follow and interact with me on Twitter.

2. (kind of dated option in this day-in-age) is to sign up for email updates or RSS.

3. (the deepest) is to sign up for the Letter.ly which requires a commitment. The Letter.ly delves deep. Right now the monthly subscription, but it will go up to $25 at midnight EST on February 1st 2011. Anyone who signs up now will be locked in at the $20 rate unless they unsubscribe.

I’ll be sure to let you know a few hours in advance if you follow on Twitter.

The best way to understand my ideas is not to just follow me on Twitter, but follow everyone I follow too. This action taps you into a collective mind that will bring you up to speed much faster than a single mind can ever hope to accomplish.

Written by Everett Bogue | Twitter gives you superpowers.

Boulder, CO. January 26th 2011.

I left (deactivated) Facebook with the intention of never returning a few days ago. I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why here on the public blog.

Many of the smartest people I know are leaving Facebook as well. I predict we’ll see many people leaving over the coming months and adopting Twitter.

For around a year I’ve been using Twitter as my primary way to communicate with most of the important people in my life.

I believe that Twitter is a new form of communication so important that it rivals the development of language in the evolutionary history of the human race.

In a few hundred years historians (or our immortal digital selves for that matter) will look back at this day and say “wow, Twitter really changed a lot of things for the people who used it. It’s too bad so many people stuck with Facebook because they were brainwashed into clicking “Like” on photos of hot girls/boys they’ll never sleep with all night long.”

Today, let’s just focus on why I left Facebook, and why you should too!

1. The purpose of the Internet is to facilitate face to face communication.

I’m beginning to see the Internet as a tool to bring people together, so they can communicate 1 to 1 in order to exchange knowledge in a high-definition way. I’ve noticed that I learn the best these days when I meet brilliant minds to meld with, in person. Facebook wasn’t facilitating this for me, it was simply becoming a black hole where plans are made but never acted upon.

Twitter does bring people together. The only reason I’m staying in Boulder CO at the moment and speaking on May 21st 2011 at This is Mindful in Melbourne Australia is because of real world interactions via Twitter.

These days I can tweet in any city, or to any city, and things happen such as tweetups or missions dedicated to saving the world. If I need a place to stay, why not just Tweet? Easy. Yes, it takes time to develop a Twitter network large enough to facilitate this kind of massive collective interaction, but it is possible.

2. Accelerated cultural evolution.

Over time Twitter develops into convergent collectives of idea innovators and executors. @rosshill is a big advocate and designer of these collectives. Essentially, your education begins to accelerate due to natural group interactions on Twitter. I’ll tweet an idea while @edwardharren @janstewart @davidahood are asleep in Melbourne, and they’ll further the idea while I’m asleep in Boulder. Over Twitter we exchange ideas, articles, and books that are necessary for the work that interests us, thus we grow together.

This is exponential education — I’m an idea-growth addict these days.

If someone in the collective isn’t resonating with me, I simply unfollow. If I stumble across someone who is resonating, I follow. It’s a fluid collective with no obligations or contracts. Don’t worry if I unfollow you, I might just come back later! It all has to do with where my mind is focused on the work.

Twitter collectives begin to develop their own languages and insider knowledge. with Twitter can even start learning how to #ibc, which is a pretty extraordinary intuitive skill to master.

3. Attention is a currency.

We’re in a full-scale war on Internet noise, and Facebook isn’t helping. Facebook’s purpose is to bring you back again and again to see ads, this means the software is designed to play on your human desires in order to make you return to the software multiple times a day.

The noise on the Internet will only grow over the next few months, and our human minds can’t deal with it. Facebook isn’t helping with the noise, instead it’s adding to it.

Where Twitter retweets and @messages feel like an epic win in the gameification of reality, Facebook “Likes” feel like an epic win for Mark Zuckerberg. Why? Because every time someone hits the “Like” button on your Facebook page, it draws you back into Facebook so you can see another advertisement. Cash-money for Facebook.

You can’t trade your ‘Like’ wealth (the amount of times that someone has clicked ‘Like’ on your status update or photo) for real cash –Facebook can and does. Shouldn’t Facebook be paying you to spend all of your time on their site?

4. We need to create and own our virtual reality worlds.

Gwen pointed me in the direction of this beautiful talk by Jonathan Harris about the reality of the Internet today. I want to make out with him (we can invite Gwen too) after the talk, you will too after you watch it.

Jonathan is beginning to see two Internets. One of these internets is filled with condominiums that all look alike, with your own pictures on the walls. These condos are easy, and free. Your great aunt can set one of these Facebook condos up — so easy.

The other Internet is the one where we build our own beautiful virtual worlds. This blog for example exists in a world that I have control over — it wouldn’t be the same or have any power if I hosted the content on Facebook or another condo-like housing situation.

The problem with renting a free internet condo (ahem, Facebook) is that someone else has control of your virtual world. So, the default for a generation of new Internet users has been to go the easy route.

The thing is, the easy route isn’t going to create you a second self that supports your life in the real world, it’s just going to keep you in a place where you’re interacting with the noise.

The farther we get away from letting someone else control our virtual world, the easier it is to find success in a world filled with overwhelming digital noise. This is why you find all of the successful digital people on Twitter, and hordes of people caught up in the noise on Facebook wondering why nothing is working for them.

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Leaving Facebook is hard. It’s a part of your 3rd brain, the part of your mind that’s situated in the cloud. It’s important to build a Twitter presence first, and then slowly transition away from Facebook. To avoid losing all of your ambient intimacy at once, move slowly and with intention from Facebook to Twitter.

Here’s how to join us in our Twitter revolution. It’s a leap of faith, I’ll see you on the other side.

Twitter quick start guide:

1. Sign up for an account using your name.
2. Put a picture of your face. (No, not your hand, your face. No, not your kitten, your face.)
3. Don’t follow celebrities or organizations (for the most part.)
4. Follow real humans and cyborgs. A good list to get started is my follow list — every one of these people is a freakin’ brilliant revolutionary.
5. Follow less than 150 people. 50 is ideal. Rotate the list based on resonation and intuition.
6. Retweet links that you like. Say things that are awesome. Send positive energy into the world. Try unexpected things.

Let’s make the leap into a world where we have control of our virtual worlds.

The Jonathan Harris Aiga talk is here if you have 36 minutes to watch beautifulness.

Gwen wrote about her and Patrick’s experience leaving and being moderate with Facebook here.

Gwen and I recorded a video on the way to the coffee shop about why we left Facebook here.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

Retweet this post so your friends can see it. If you’re still on Facebook, hit the ‘Like’ button so more people will defect to the free world.

I wrote a little something about the end of a movement on a tiny virtual reality world that I created this morning…

“Minimalism was cool for awhile. Now, it’s simply the echo of a revolution that once was.” –> http://www.fuckminimalism.com

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter.

Written by Everett Bogue | Cyborgs only communicate on Twitter.

January 23rd 2011, Boulder CO. 7:44am, Trident Coffee.

This is a confessional post. It’s one that I’ve been meaning to write as long as I’ve had this blog. It’s going to shock you, awe you, and perhaps even give you a little secret weapon that you can use against me in emergency situations.

Feel free to retweet it to all of your friends so they can feel my intense vulnerability here.

As Brene Brown says in her brilliant TED talk: courage and vulnerability go hand in hand. You can’t be courageous if you aren’t showing a side of you that your first instinct might be to protect.

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Alright. Deep breath. Let me tell you the secret that all of the people who’ve met me in person over the last year or so have noticed instantly.

Here it is:

All throughout my time writing about minimalism, I was wearing $200 Diesel jeans. Sometimes I had two pairs.

So, whenever you were reading posts back in the day about how I was living with 57 things (I no longer count things, but I do live out of a bag.) The “jeans” section was actually more like “$195 Italian designed but made in Indonesia 29″-32″ raw denim from the Diesel store.”

When I got into Boulder, CO (story for another day!) a few days ago, I realized that my 29″ pants were falling off again. I’d lost weight running around New York, or my pants had stretched a bit.

My bright turquoise American Apparel boxer briefs were showing from almost all directions.

As many of you know, I’m self-identifying as a cybernetic yogi (which I am, btw, dominating on google search results) right now, and part of being a cybernetic yogi is being able to do lotus pose anywhere in the world (and in virtual reality) –especially out on the street where people will look at me like I’m weird.

The only natural thing to do was to step into the Prana store on Pearl Street in Boulder and grab a pair of climbing pants ($54). They’re ultra-light, clean and dry easily, and also I can put my foot over my head if I want to in public places. Awesome!

Goodbye Diesel Jeans! Hello new world!

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I’m writing this as a confession, but I also want to make a point about money.

I do not feel ashamed about spending $200 on Diesel jeans for years. In fact, I love Diesel jeans, and will continue to. If I need a pair in the future, I will not hesitate to buy another pair.

This has never been, and will never be, a frugality blog.

In my experience, worrying about how you’re spending your money can be counter-productive in many respects.

Don’t worry about how much you spend on food, instead eat properly. Don’t worry about how much you’re spending on education, instead educate yourself smartly (this may not apply to college). Don’t worry about how much you’re spending on travel, instead see the world! You might just end up in unexpected places.

When you set limits on yourself, like: “all of my stuff will fit into a bag!” or “I will never buy a house and car in the suburbs” it’s hard to overspend on stuff you don’t need.

Instead, invest all of that energy/time on how you’re generating income with your second self.

When you make the switch from physical to mental tools (Twitter is a great way to start doing this,) it’s even easier to avoid overspending on things you don’t need, as you’ll start to realize just how much you don’t need things anymore. This is what I’m talking about when I’m speaking about cyborgs in-depth on the Letter.ly.

If you want to wear expensive jeans, wear them. A good pair of jeans can do wonders for how people perceive you in the real world. I, however, finally got past the point where that was necessary to wear expensive jeans. Instead, I wanted pants with functionality — namely flexible functionality.

Let the Prana climbing-pants era begin! Asana everywhere! I feel like I’m not wearing pants sometimes.

Ev

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

January 21st 2011. Boulder, CO.

I love Mars Dorian, and I laughed when he said “What kind of pills did you slip into your muesli?” the other day when we were Skyping. While Mars and I aren’t exactly #ibcing yet, after the in-person Skype chat we were way closer to being on the same page.

It’s true, Far Beyond The Stars lately has been kind of well, far beyond the stars.

The content here has been what we meditators like to call delving deep. It’s a brief glance into the future which is now for a few of us — I’m a timelord, you’re stepping into my Tardis when you’re with me in this space (it’s bigger on the inside than it is on the out.)

I’m hoping that the content that I still post on this blog will bring you to a page where you can delve deeper into the work I’m doing using the Letter.ly or the new book I’m working on.

Gwen and I have been talking a lot lately about how we wish the Internet was more 4-dimensional. It needs the intelligence to spot a person who’s at the point in their lives where they really need a 5-ways to declutter your desk post and give it to them, instead of a deep philosophical piece on assimilating other cyborgs into the collective.

The truth is that my work moves, it changes, it evolves. Your work does and will too.

Unfortunately I can’t write simple posts about ultra-light travel anymore. If you want a great collection of those, The Art of Being Minimalist really sums up how to go minimalist from the human perspective (though cyborg eyes will glaze over at this point when they read the content that I wrote a year ago.)

My physical/mental/spiritual body has been evolving, it’s tapped into the exponential nature of technology, and so my cultural evolution is tethered to the rate of computer chip evolution. This evolution is quickly closing on something like a million to the power of a million times better than it was every year, just wait until we get exponentially accelerating quantum computer chips. How will you possibly understand me then if you aren’t on quantum-Twitter?

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Minimalism was assimilated by the cyborgs.

This didn’t happen because cyborgs wanted to become minimalists, it’s because we the cyborgs didn’t know who we were when we became minimalists.

For eons humans only made physical tools, then all of a sudden we began to develop mental tools. This much is clear from Amber Case’s brilliant Ted Talk that you all should have watched by now.

Cyborgs are simply humans who made the shift from physical tools to mental tools. Eventually there will be enough cyborgs that we can call them humans again, and we’ll call people who still use physical tools something else.

I don’t want you to be called something else, so that’s why I keep telling you to get on Twitter.

When you develop mental tools, in a very short time you begin to realize that you don’t need your physical possessions anymore, so you kind of just let them go — it doesn’t hurt anymore. I saw this happen within a few weeks to Maren Kate after she went location independent when Zirtual was accepted into an incubator program in Palo Alto. She instantly shifted from physical tools to mental tools. Welcome to cyborgia Maren.

This doesn’t mean that minimalism never existed, just that there is much more depth under the idea that many of us previously imagined. I predict that a lot of minimalist websites in the next year (actually, probably a lot faster than that) will fold or move on to deeper topics as our own evolution progresses towards the future.

If you’re a minimalist blogger, it might be wise to quickly snag a URL that isn’t ‘minimalist-X’ before everyone evolves exponentially past what you’re writing about. However, be mindful of what your readers need. Mine need cyborgs right now, your readers might be in a different place than mine are.

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As always, the deeper stuff is going to go on the Letter.ly. The blog is the surface, you have to commit to stepping into the time-machine.

Required reading on how cyborgs are using intuitive back channel #ibc by Jan Stewart.

Everett

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is an excerpt from the work I’m doing on developing a second self on the Internet that will take care of you (what is a second self? See Amber Case’s Ted talk on cyborgs.)

If you like this work, I’ve set up a Letter.ly where I will be sending dispatches from the future that is now. For more details on the Letter.ly scroll down to the end of this post. Thank you.

Written on January 18th, 2011. The Ace Hotel, 29th Street. Manhattan, New York.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on a couch at the Ace Hotel in New York next to Gwen Bell. If you haven’t seen the interior of the Ace Hotel, google it. It’s astonishing. Basically, it feels like you’ve time traveled back to the 1940s, where everything was beautiful and you’re a part of it. It’s doing it’s best to represent the golden age of amazingness.

The thing is, the 1940s didn’t look at all like the Ace Hotel. The rustic metal tables, the luxuriously simple Edison bulbs that Edison never would have dreamed of creating. The couch we’re sitting on has so many buttons on it, like 160 buttons probably, it’s just absurd.

Basically, The Ace Hotel is virtual reality manifested in real reality. It’s a dream world that’s been constructed in real space and time. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t look at all like the past, you still feel like you’re there.

In fact, you’re not in the past at all. The Ace Hotel is the future. We want to feel like we’re connected to the past, and thus we’re teleporting ourselves into the future where everything feels and looks like amazingness.

Ray Kurzweil believes that in a very short time we’re not going to need to build virtual reality in reality like the Ace Hotel has done here in New york. Instead virtual reality will become indistinguishable from what is real. Instead of transporting our bodies from where we live to 29th Street and Broadway, we will teleporting our minds to places that look and feel real.

Like woah! Craziness, right? But not so much. We’re already doing this with increasingly complex games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, but soon we’re going to get to a point where we can shut down our neural receivers and plug in an experience that looks and feels exactly like the Ace Hotel, but probably a million times better.

We won’t be conscious of the fact that we’re sitting on a rustic/destroyed couch that feels like they beamed it to the future. Instead, we’ll be in a world where anything is possible. If we want to be in the past, we’ll be there. If we want to be in never never land, we’ll be there. Why wouldn’t we want to be?

Everyone will want to be a part of this, the problem is that no one will know how to deal with it. We’re all going to jump in head first to whatever reality we want to be in, and in the meantime we’re going to forget about our physical selves. We do still have physical bodies. They are real, and our experience of virtual reality is highly dependent on how our physical bodies feel.

Our second self will not be beautiful if we aren’t beautiful. We can’t be beautiful if we don’t eat right, or practice our yoga (or whatever practice you prefer.)

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Let’s rewind back to the future that we’re living in now. Everyone around us is texting from New York to LA, when there’s a real human being across the table from them. This isn’t presence, it’s absence. Ambient intimacy is amazing, but there’s a real human across the table from you, and they need you to be here with them.

How do we get there? I believe it has to do with cultivating your second self.

When you have a second self that’s strong enough to take care of you, you no longer need to be waiting around for that SMS message from LA. Your second self can take care of it for you.

When we think of cyborgs, the first thing that comes to mind is people who are plugged in, tethered to their phones or soon their headsets. The thing is, it isn’t the cyborgs who are tethered, it’s the humans. They’re the ones who are being forced to be ready all of the time for another incoming message from the ethersphere.

The truth is that the more people I meet from cyborgia, the more I realize that they’re all incredibly present in their real lives. They have another self that’s out there, working incredibly well for them — why be on the Internet all day long? They only need to check in for an hour a day, or every once in awhile they’ll plug into Twitter for a little dose of ambient intimacy if they need it.

Eventually, we get to a point with being a cyborg that we don’t need to check in with our second self at all. We simply let it do it’s thing, it takes care of us, and we sit back, relax and enjoy the show that is real life.

Being present with the person who’s sitting next to your at the Ace Hotel is what is beautiful. Not waiting for another text from LA.

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When reality becomes indistinguishable from virtual reality, this will only become more insane for the ones of us who haven’t developed these second selves. If we haven’t, we’ll be force to beam back and forth into different virtual worlds for the whims of others.

If we wanted to hang out at the the V-Ace Hotel all day long, we can’t, because someone wants us to come to the V-McDonalds for a crap cup of coffee. Just like we can’t respond to every email that comes in from randomness, we can’t be expected to jump between virtual worlds at everyone else’s beck and call. It just won’t be emotionally or physically sustainable for our human bodies as we traverse the real world.

We’re going to have to set expectations for how others interact with us in virtual worlds, especially when we can’t tell the difference between there and here. Our second selves will have to deal with all of the incoming noise, from the space and also from other humans who want us.

Just as now I can’t be expected to personally respond to every email that I receive asking me ‘WTF is a cyborg?’. You won’t be expected to beam to V-Starbucks and personally meet with anyone who wants to see you. You’re going to have to let your second self bring all of these people up to speed.

In fact, email will soon be obsolete for most cyborgs. So will Facebook. Cyborgs only use Twitter to communicate, which builds intuition. Eventually they may not need Twitter at all.

This future is uncertain, that’s for sure. Initially we don’t trust our second selves, we aren’t sure if we gave them the right information in order to teach the others who are interested in our work about the work that they need to learn about.

In essence, you’ll be less successful in the future if you try to do everything yourself. Everyone else will be outsourcing all of most people’s experience to their second selves, and if you insist on doing everything yourself. Just as you might be doing now with your own interactions online, you’ll end up supernovaing if you don’t build a second self that takes care of you.

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I’m writing my next book on Letter.ly, which is a subscription-based email service. Until February 1st 2011, you’ll be able to subscribe for $20 per month. You can unsubscribe at any time. There’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email you receive.

For more on how Letter.ly works, see Ross Hill’s post on how to use it.

I currently subscribe to two incredibly valuable Letter.ly newsletters. The first is Ross Hill‘s, the second is Crystal Silver‘s. More bloggers will be switching to this platform, because creation is evolving away from blogs and towards paid subscription content.

My new book is about how to build a second self that will take care of your physical body. Essentially achieving financial freedom and location independence. It isn’t for everyone, but many people have and will achieve this.

I’ll be posting much less on this blog, and more on the letter.ly. I’m doing this because the work I’m doing now is right on the border of genius/insanity. Information like this can rip people through the space/time continuum in a way that burns people’s brains. I need to know who’s getting it, and help them understand what’s happening to them when they read it.

If you join now you’ll be locked in at the $20 rate unless you unsubscribe. The subscription price will be going up on February 1st.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Everyone who uses Twitter this way is more beautiful/successful and upgrading at an incredible rate:

1. Follow less than 150 people. Your human brain can’t breathe if you exceed that limit. Less is always more. Start large, but work your way down, not up.

2. It’s a river, you can’t drink it all.

3. Who cares about DMs, public @.

4. Who cares who follows you.

5. Picture of your Face, because you’re beautiful and human.

6. Unfollow anyone who you no(know)-longer recognize (people who are noise).

7. Send only positive energy. Information is a form of energy.

8. Follow the people I follow and you’ll turn into us.

9. For every hour of Twitter = one hour of yoga. You can breathe and use Twitter at the same time. Breathing is yoga = pranayama. Asana will teach you to breathe and Tweet.

10. 1 hour of Internet is currently 40 in RL. It’s headed toward escape velocity.

Good, now you’re on your way to becoming a #psychictechnoninja. This is what facilitates #ibc. Intuitive Back Channel. Also #convergence.

Chances are you have no idea what I’m talking about, but you will when you do the above for x-days. Leap of faith.

Teach 5 friends how use Twitter this week so they can come with you.

Retweet this.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Try explaining to someone who hasn’t used Twitter that we’re becoming a race of cyborgs, they’ll look at you like you just teleported in from Gallifrey.

The reality is that we did just teleport in. We’re becoming a new form of convergent homo sapien: time travelers with wormholes in our pockets… and it’s only a short time before those wormholes move from our pockets to somewhere far more useful.

I want you to watch this, because I hope it can make what is happening to you make sense. Amber Case is one of the must beautiful fraking brilliant geniuses on the planet at this very moment. I can’t explain to you in words how important this information is to you, me, and the world we’re working towards.

We are all becoming cyborgs. You’re either one of us, or you will be soon. You can try to fight it, deny it, but it won’t change the fact that this is happening.

You’re a part of this, and the change is accelerating with the exponential nature of technology.

Yesterday I Twittered: “You do not want to be a control group in exponential evolution. It’s just a really bad idea. We have to upgrade or yikes.” This much is true.

Some of you are being left behind, lost in the noise. A great deal of the build up in/of frustration, anger, jealousy that you’re seeing in your world is directly related to this change.

One of my foremost worries right now: what if the divide becomes too vast? We’re going to be exploring this in more detail here, on Twitter, and in the new e-book we’re working on.

All cyborgs will need to learn to breathe –this is our practice.

Let’s all embrace our own humanity, in the things we’ve created.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

January 8th 2011, Brooklyn NY, The School House.

I’ve been coming back to the idea of the digital self over and over recently, in particular how we portray ourselves online.

Over the last few months I’ve had the pleasure of meeting dozens of successful bloggers in person, and I’ve always been surprised at just how similar they are to their digital selves — the them that exists online in the cloud, the one that you see when you check their blogs, Twitter, etc. A digital self is self-perpetuating and lives independently of your own physical body.

Perhaps transparency and the success of a digital self go hand-in-hand? If you’re able to communicate your true nature online, you will be able to reach deeper into everyone else’s souls across the ether in order to stir up some real feelings.

We can tell if you’re holding something back from us. I don’t think everyone can, but we can. The ones of us who were raised by the Internet. Neck-deep in the cybersystem every night searching for the next answer, or letting the next answer search for us.

This is why I always find the time Lex Garey’s work. When she writes a post, I know it’s coming from her and not some artificial sense of what she wants you to think she is.

Being on the Internet gives you an opportunity to shape-shift into anyone you want. Maybe you’ll choose a cute little humanoid-kitten avatar, instead of your true face. However, this choice comes at a cost.

When you choose to hide your true nature, whether you’re going to some artificial extreme or you’re simply pretending to be part of the status quo, we sense the disconnect.

We’re still humans using the Internet, and we use it to connect with other humans. We can read between lines. We’re not going to feel the same way about your WoW Avatar as we do about your beautiful human face.

We think we have a choice about how much we share, and we do. Life is lived in high-bandwidth, but we make decisions about everything we funnel out into the net (for now, that will change when the bandwidth gets wide and free enough for complete life-casting.)

So, I can choose to show you a picture of my abs five minutes after I woke up this morning. Or, I could have decided to show you a picture of my shoes.

Which do you connect with most? Which builds a more compelling story of who I am to you?

..and more importantly, how can you bring more of your true nature out onto the Net? It might just be what the world needs.

–

I’m really into using Instagram to share moments of my life. You can follow the photos on Twitter, Facebook or by installing Instragram on your iphone and searching for ‘evbogue’.

Gwen Bell, Tanya Quicky, and I are hosting a tweetup to discuss the future of technology at The Language Department in New York. Friday, January 14th at 8pm. I hope you’ll join us.