Welcome to the Phrenicea website!

Humans are unique and special, if only because we have the innate capability to be self aware. We can also dwell on the past and envision the future. All of us inevitably do both whether it's kicking ourselves for not buying that stock that split ten times, or planning for tomorrow, next year or even decades hence. Many find pleasure in trying to imagine what life would be like years from now. It is with that spirit that the Phrenicea™ website anticipates our world in the 21st century.

It should be acknowledged here that we cannot predict the future with any certainty. (Who could have predicted the Web phenomenon just ten years ago!) Our world with Phrenicea is thus fictitious. What began as a short story in May 1999 and published online (MightyWords™) in November 1999 has evolved into this website.

Many of the topics addressed in the story have been featured in the media recently. Perhaps the richest example is the excellent Time® magazine series in print and on the web. In addition, there is the long established World Future Society.

Our world with Phrenicea is an extrapolation based on current trends resulting from the ongoing population explosion and the recent Internet/Web phenomenon. There is always a benign risk involved in predicting the future and there are limits to extrapolation, which traditionally infers by extending or projecting known information from the present. However, Phrenicea takes the current trends and turns them upside down. Thus, in many ways life ends up being, both socially and technologically, more like the primitive societies of yore.

Many continue to cling to the stereotypical future as depicted in the Jetsons® cartoon, where technology reigns supreme, especially in the form of gadgets galore. Phrenicea blows that away. Gone are all the gadgets. Gone are the skills to build or maintain them. Even the Internet and Web are gone - replaced with Phrenicea, a world well beyond (before?) today's technological revolution. For inhabitants of that time, these can be considered the good old days.