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example, we've learned to chip away at age-old rationalizations for racism, sexism and oppression.

    Alas, this necessary debunking also put under dark suspicion any attempt to use words like sanity . Post-modernists decry the term as meaningless , but that may be going too far. Like an elephant fondled by blind men, sanity is hard to define, but we can often tell when it is there, or not. Tragedies tend to happen in its absence.

    Entering a new century, are we finally ready to try again for a new definition? One that is culturally-neutral, based on satiability, empathy, diversity and adaptability? One that celebrates human eccentricity, while at the same time drawing gentle offers of help toward those who fume among us, like smoldering powder kegs?

    Already, studies of brain chemistry suggest that many of our most pleasant behaviors—athletics, sex, music, affection, parenting—are reinforced by psychoactive compounds we release into our own bloodstreams. Studying this reinforcement system—and how some modern humans hijack it for abuse—may be more useful than any tool yet brought to bear in the agonizing "war" against illicit drugs.

    I may be deluded to think we've made progress toward a saner world, and for predicting more dramatic strides in days to come. But consider the alternative—a near-future world of ten billion people, many of them poor and angry, yet also able to instantly access everything from atom bomb designs to complete maps of the human genome. A Bladerunner future, oft-portrayed in lurid sci-fi films, where fantastic technology is unmatched by advances in maturity. Where crucial decisions are made by opulent and unaccountable elites. The image is kind of cute, in a ninety-minute noir movie. But in real life, such a world would self-destruct. It must serve as a stage to something better, or else something much worse.

    Navigating that path will be the demanding task of citizens in the coming Transition Age. Those mighty folk will determine Earth's destiny—whether we achieve our potential or sink into a nightmare worse than any in our past.

    It's quite a challenge.

    Prepare your kids to face it.

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1 For more on this see The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom & Privacy ? BACK

. . . back to fiction . . .

    Stones of Significance

    No one ever said it was easy to be a god, responsible for billions of sapient lives, having to listen to their dreams, anguished cries, and carping criticism.

    Try it for a while.

    It can get to be a drag, just like any other job.

    My new client wore the trim, effortlessly athletic figure of a neo-traditionalist human. Beneath a youthful-looking brow, minimal cranial implants made barely noticeable bulges, resembling the modest horns of some urbane Mephistopheles. Other features were stylishly androgynous, though broad shoulders and a swaggering stride made the male pronoun seem apropos.

    House cross-checked our guest's credentials before ushering him along a glowing guide beam, past the Reality Lab to my private study.

    I've always been proud of my inner sanctum; the sand garden, raked to fractal perfection by a robot programmed with my own esthetic migrams; the shimmering mist fountain; a grove of hybrid peach-almond trees, forever in bloom and fruiting.

    My visitor gazed perfunctorily across the harmonious scene. Alas, it clearly did not stir his human heart.

    Well , I thought, charitably. Each modern soul has many homes. Perhaps his true spirit resides outside the skull, in parts of him that are not protoplasm .

    "We suspect that repugnant schemes are being planned by certain opponents of good order."

    These were the dour fellow's first words, as he folded long legs to sit where I indicated, by a low wooden table, hand-crafted from a design of the Japanese Meiji Era.

    Single-minded , I diagnosed from my cerebral cortex.

    And tactless , added one of my higher brain layers—the one called seer .

    Our shared