John Herman Biography - Phrenicea Founder

<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#333333" link="#000066" vlink="#666699" alink="#FF0000">  <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" bgcolor="#3366cc"> <tr align="center" valign="top"> <td> <font color="#ffffff" face="verdana, arial" size="1"> <strong> "Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself." </strong> </font> </td> </tr> <tr bgcolor="#ffffff"> <td> </td> </tr> <tr align="center" valign="bottom"> <td> <font color="#ffffff" face="verdana, arial" size="1"> <strong> Samuel Butler </strong> </font> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="3" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <tr> <td height="10"> </td> </tr> </table> <div align="center"> <table width="85%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <tr> <td> <img src="johnherman.jpg" border="0" width="140" height="140" align="right" hspace="5" alt="john herman"> <h3><font face="arial, helvetica" color="#000066">John Herman Biography</font></h3> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet MS" size="2"> John Herman is an avid student of the future and has been working in the Information Technology field for over 25 years. He is a vice president of database administration at Citigroup in New York. He earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from New York's Stony Brook University, is a member of Mensa and enjoys creative pursuits. <p> In the early 1990s, he founded LetterPro Inc., a writing and editing entrepreneurial endeavor. </p> <p> His most recent passion is "Project Phrenicea" — the development and promulgation of the website phrenicea.com, a philosophical treatise on the future. It is based on his 1999 short story "The Engagement of Phrenicea," a fictionalized account of what will occur in the 21st century. The story and website present a fatidic scenario predicting  <table width="200" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="1" align="left"> <tr> <td> <font color="#cc0000" face="arial" size="3"> Herman believes that the trend toward distributed computing à la the Internet, will do an incredible about-face. </font> </td> </tr> </table>  the ultimate outcome of the Internet and biotechnology revolutions — which in turn affect all aspects of "post-postmodern" life. </p> <p> John strongly believes that by envisioning the future, we are inevitably drawn to scrutinize the present — or better still, vitalized to become more actively involved in steering its course. </p> <p>Especially challenging, unlike the study of the past, is the lack of data from the future to work with. The tendency then is to extrapolate present trends, which in many cases are already steering towards conditions not in the best interests of the individual, society, or the environment — local or global. </p> <p> Herman, a self-described contrarian, believes that the current trend toward distributed computing and information dispersion, à la the Internet, will do an incredible bouleversement, where all information and access to it will be centralized and controlled by a single entity — none other than Phrenicea! This and other over-the-top scenarios depicted on the Phrenicea site often instigate a rise out of visitors resulting in "<a href="peeyoo.htm">eloquent</a>" emails. </p>