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A concept is needed to address the spatial scope of ELECTRIFICATION in the world and as a world unto itself. The ELECTRICAL WORLD defines the boundary of this total system of ELECTRICITY from the microcosm to the macrocosm.
Placing this concept within other contexts can help to reveal its meaning. For example, philosopher Martin Heidegger could have been describing the ELECTRICAL WORLD in the essay the Question Concerning Technology: "Enframing [the ELECTRICAL WORLD*], as a challenging-forth into ordering, sends into a way of revealing. Enframing [the ELECTRICAL WORLD*] is an ordaining of destining, as is every way of revealing." (1n) This paraphrased quote indicates that how we define the ELECTRICAL WORLD will determine what we are able to reveal or see. Thus, it becomes necessary for us to further unravel the concept so that we may notice the ELECTRICAL LINES-OF-FORCE all around us, and begin to question how we perceive, experience, and think about them. To do so, we need to define three subworlds, the NATURAL, ARTIFICIAL, and VIRTUAL WORLDS. The ELECTRICAL WORLD unifies these into an overarching and comprehensive physical model. This allows us to explore diverse ELECTRICAL phenomena such as lightning, the human NERVOUS SYSTEM, dishwashers, and COMPUTER NETWORKs as both a discrete and unified subject matter. Each of these subworlds in turn constitutes a unique aspect of the ELECTRIFICATION process. And each subworld will ultimately be grounded in its relation to a new species of life, HOMO ELECTRUS. The measurement of this evolutionary and revolutionary transformation from NATURAL to ARTIFICIAL to VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL STATES of BEING will then be spatially established. |
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In the beginning there was a big ELECTROMAGNETIC bang in which the NATURAL ELECTRICAL WORLD originated some 20 billion years ago. It is speculated that a plasmatic gas of neutrally CHARGED PARTICLEs decayed into other ELECTRICAL PARTICLEs such as protons and ELECTRONS in a thermo-NUCLEAR reaction. These charged particles of MATTER then fused into ELECTRICAL relationships with one another, creating ATOMS some 15 billion years ago. These evolutionary ATOMS then clustered together, creating molecules, and ultimately formed our planet EARTH some 5 billion years ago. (1.5)
Thus, our EARTH is suspended in universe that is "full of electromagnetic energy, radiation that somehow seems to be both waves in an electromagnetic field and particles at the same time. It exists in a spectrum of wavelengths that includes cosmic rays, gamma rays, X rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves, and radio waves. Together, electromagnetic fields and energies interact in many complex ways that have given rise to much of the natural world..." (2) 
The EARTH itself is unique in that it acts as a giant ELECTROMAGNET defined by its North and South poles, has a protective shield against stellar space PARTICLEs called the Van Allen radiation belts, and has an electrified ATMOSPHERE which is most noticeable through weather events such as a thunderstorm, where an electric lightning stroke sparking across the sky for up to two miles, with an "electromotive force of 125 million volts," (3) or as an aurora borealis, such as the northern lights, where charged PARTICLEs color the dome of the night sky.
In the ancient waters of the EARTH cellular LIFEFORMs began to appear, and more and more complex organisms began their transformative advance onto land. Some of these new LIFEFORMs were designed with special ELECTRICAL qualities. Such as fish like the electric eel, which can "produce up to 600 volts of ELECTRICITY, more than enough to kill the frogs and small fish that are their food." (4) Or the bat who uses sounds waves to navigate and locate prey. In the last several million years, of the LIFEFORMs that made it to land, human BEINGs have become the most adapted to planetary survival. Beyond solely the ELECTRICAL composition of molecules that make up our general physical bodies, we humans have been outfitted with an ELECTRICAL BRAIN and NERVOUS SYSTEM which acts as a natural ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE for mediating our fundamental REALITY. Thus, our CONSCIOUSNESS, as it has evolved to the present, is ELECTRICALLY sustained. This includes our ability to communicate with one another through language, so as to share our ideas about the meaning of life with one another. For example, when we use our SENSES such as our eyes, tongue, ears, hands, and nose to communicate, we are using our NERVOUS SYSTEM and BRAIN as an intergral part of our language system. Specifically, it is in the ELECTRICAL properties of the neuron firing which shows "[w]hether the NERVE is one that indicates stretch, touch, chemical composition, warmth, cold, sight, or sound, it transmits its INFORMATION by means of a train of pulses of ELECTRICITY, all of approximately the same magnitude and duration, regardless of the intensity of the stimulus, with only the rate of generation of the pulses indicating whether the sensation is trivial or intense." (5) 
As we find ourselves suspended between the scales of microcosmic qualities of CHARGED PARTICLEs, living on a planet which is a giant ELECTROMAGNET, sustained in an ELECTRICAL ATMOSPHERE, placed in a macrocosmic sea of ELECTROMAGNETISM- our ELECTRICALLY based and biased LIFEFORM can without coincidence be specifically known as HOMO ELECTRUS, or the ELECTRICAL human.The NATURAL ELECTRICAL WORLD, then, describes all ELECTRICAL phenomenon in the universe except for that which is manipulated and reordered by HOMO ELECTRUS. It thus defines everything in which ELECTRICITY acts as the structural and paradigmatic foundation for that which is materially composed, from the big bang to the EARTH, to ourselves. It is perplexing to try to comprehend all that is ELECTRICAL in nature. It is more than we will ever know. But by attempting to understand ELECTRICITY, we may begin to better understand our ELECTRICAL WORLD, and our seemingly unique place in it. |
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"Nature has disappeared. What remains is reality created or structured consciously by [humans] for human purposes." (7)
Increasingly, it seems, unadulterated nature on EARTH is difficult to find. Indeed, most everything humans have done to date, if not everything, has been and become an act of artifice. Of these artificial acts, those which are specifically made and manipulated by HOMO ELECTRUS are herein known as ELECTRICAL ARTIFACTS. It is the ASSEMBLAGE of these specifically ELECTRICAL ARTIFACTS into a spatial relationship with one another which constitutes our ARTIFICIAL ELECTRICAL WORLD. 
Examples of this subdomain of the ELECTRICAL WORLD are various, and include: the ancient trade in AMBER, (7.5n) the ELECTRICAL BATTERY, the ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, a hairdryer, a music-video, an automobile, and electronic money such as credit and ATM cards.
The ARTIFICIAL ELECTRICAL WORLD thus denotes ELECTRICAL objects, events, and places which are manipulated and reordered by humans for our own use, through our tools, techniques, and machinery.
Sometimes the ELECTRICAL ARTIFACT becomes an emulation of natural methods and processes. Such that, as Jacques Ellul wrote, our techniques, the basis of our technologies, become stories of transition from the natural state to the artificial: "The world that is being created by the accumulation of technical means is an artificial world and hence radically different from the natural world. .. [T]he technical milieu absorbs the natural." (8) Thus, sometimes a natural phenomenon such as the sunlight is transformed by HOMO ELECTRUS into an ELECTRICAL ARTIFACT such as a lightbulb, an ARTIFICIAL LIGHT upon which we totally depend. Today, by examining these ELECTRICAL ASSEMBLAGES of our ARTIFICIAL ELECTRICAL WORLD, we can help to prepare the empirical foundation for interpretating our ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION, and also help future archaeologists understand the extent of our total reliance upon this mysterious ELECTRICAL FORCE. |
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Unleashed through our explorations of the ELECTRICAL FORCE is an experiential geography which is everywhere "latent, lurking, hidden, obscured, veiled, esoteric, underlying, under the surface, submerged, between the lines, hibernating, sleeping, dormant, potential, unmanifested, possible..." (10)
It is here that the VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL WORLD has its origin. A subdomain of the ELECTRICAL WORLD, it is a place "specified in essence or effect though not in name." (11) Benjamin Woolley goes further in describing the "virtual" as: "[A]n abstract entity or process that has found physical expression, that has been 'realized.' It is a simulation, only not necessarily a simulation of anything actual... [also,] purely abstract entities, in being independent of any particular physical embodiment, but real nonetheless... 'Virtual', then, is a mode of simulated existence." (12) The VIRTUAL REPRESENTATION, thus, can be understood as an ELECTRONIC simulation, culminating in the expression of the NATURAL and ARTIFICIAL ELECTRICAL WORLDS. The VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL WORLD, then, is a collection of these VIRTUAL REPRESENTATIONS as they are naturally mediated and artificially interpreted by HOMO ELECTRUS and specific ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES. Of these two mediums, the first and ultimate virtual experience is REALITY as it is mediated by the SENSES and interpreted by the CONSCIOUSNESS system of HOMO ELECTRUS. 
For example, in the physically finite domain of the BRAIN the infinitely wide range of external existence is experienced as a parallel world of internal thoughts and emotion.
An example of this virtual physicality is given by Sigmund Freud in Civilization and its Discontents in which memories are treated as artifacts, and an archeaology of the ruins of mind is demonstrated. (12.3n) Other examples of sensate plays of VIRTUAL REPRESENTATIONS include the fantasy of dreams and the horrors of nightmares. (12.5n) And lastly, of the natural elements of virtuality in HOMO ELECTRUS, are the effects of naturally occurring drugs and medicines such as marijuana which alter the chemistry of the BRAIN, and sometimes lead to visions and hallucinations of VIRTUAL REPRESENTATIONS. Our perceptual experience has also been transformed by acts of artifice, such as when we manipulate and reorder our individual and group CONSCIOUSNESS. Early examples are found in the pantheon of Western mythology, whereby the ancient Greek supreme god Zeus carried a symbolic lightning bolt and the Roman god of thunder Thor followed suit, each portraying a virtual physicality in the heavens and on EARTH. Some technologies ultimately helped to transfer these virtual worlds over TIME and SPACE to more and more people, keeping them alive inside different mediums. The book, for instance, creates an artificial virtuality by transferring an author's 'world' into a reader's BRAIN, thereby recreating a set of VIRTUAL REPRESENTATIONS via a series of coded words. What is important is that this transference is at its base an ELECTRICAL EVENT. Further, several specifically ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES such as the telephone, radio, television, and computer have evolved which are dedicated to transmitting simulations of existence to HOMO ELECTRUS. These SPACE-TIME MACHINES reorder our experience and help constitute what is popularly known as CYBERSPACE and VIRTUAL REALITY. In summary, the VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL WORLD reconstructs a 'place' via natural and artificial ASSEMBLAGES of VIRTUAL REPRESENTATIONS inside the ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES and BRAIN of HOMO ELECTRUS. These ELECTRONIC simulations of existence ultimately challenge our experiential notions of SPACE, TIME, and REALITY itself. |