Did you know that "The future is all in your head"? Well according to the folks at "Phrenicea" it is!

Phrenicea (pronounced fren-EEE-shuh) is a .com website depicting a fictionalized account of what will occur in the first century of the new millennium.

Online since 2000, it presents a mildly dystopian (rather than apocalyptic) midcentury scenario sans the Internet and web and its associated information disbursement. Supplanting that chaotic state that ultimately threatens human culture and civilization is the stability offered by the Phrenicea braincomb, inhabited by human brains nurtured not unlike bees in a hive.

The name Phrenicea® is a portmanteau of phrenic (of the mind) and panacea (cure all). The site describes itself as "Predicting the ultimate outcome of the Internet and biotechnology revolutions." The futuristic scenario is an outgrowth of the short story "The Engagement of Phrenicea," originally published in 1999.

The site's Primer page describes the mind-set of Phrenicea and moves from there to extrapolate that philosophy in several directions. Ideas posited include:

• Life in the future will go "full circle" and be made simple again, as technology advances almost to the brink of not being controllable
• The disbursement of information fostered by the Internet will do an about-face with all information centralized into a biologically based "braincomb"
• Our personal wealth will be intrinsic on a man-made 24th chromosome pair
• And we'll wile away time by bidding on memories of past lives to relive.

Something for all of you to remember is that the site encourages comments and content contributions and does not subject visitors to:

• annoying pop-ups
• spam
• advertising
• web cookies.

Your assignment for today is an easy one:

• First is to correctly pronounce Phrenicea
• Second is to try entering the Phrenicea T-shirt contest
• Third, see if you can answer the featured Trivia Quiz

• Also, if you feel ambitious you can read all about how the Phrenicea site "evolved" from a short story!

The future is all in your head — so keep thinking about it!

Class dismissed!