Preserving Our Pattern of Life in Dry Digital Realms

Reflecting on the insights and synthesis of a good friend who has been studying the Human Operating System and the implications of its encounter with and inhabitation of the digital realm.

This was a great discussion, worth rewatching in its entirety at some point: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-atlantic-2026-07-07.mp4

Jeff distinguished between Wet vs Dry structures in reality, with wet structures being those that are alive, complex, entangled and found throughout the natural world. Whereas dry structures tend to be the product of human engineering, efficiently designed for a specific purpose and environmental conditions. Wet structures on the other hand are resilient and adaptable to a changing environment.

I loved this video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidsime_cfd-flow-digitaltwins-ugcPost-6950593066558775296-ahlC

This was used to demonstrate the impact of dry structures (the washer and the bowl) on wet, human social systems (the water). This collision leads to unnatural behaviour that disturbs the harmony of the dynamic system. One example clearly showed how some structures can cleanly isolate specific members of the population from others.

Is this similar to what is happening when the dry structures of the digital software and algorithms we design collide with human society?

The video got me thinking that one of the key places that protocols sit is as a mediation layer between the wet and the dry layers of reality. Trying to shape, influence and create some bounds over, the effects/disturbances of the impact when these two structures with very different properties interact/collide.

The digital world is an alien, inhospitable realm constructed of purely 0’s and 1’s. Human reality is far more complex, rich, alive and nuanced. See Attuning to Our Quantum Reality for more on this. Jeff’s talk dives into all the ways the Human OS is not built to extend ourselves into these digital realms. We have not even begun to develop the sensory package, safety apparatus and protocols that could give us confidence we can inhabit this realm and navigate the risks it presents intelligently.

Not only is this alien realm inhospitable, but it is inhabited by wolves. Powerful actors with unknown capabilities that are difficult to sense, perceive and reason about. These wolves are hunting our pattern of life and we are all vulnerable.

We need to develop a Mixed Digital Martial Arts practice.

But perhaps this practice begins before any question of defence. Proprioception is the sense that tells us where our limbs are in space, how we are moving and being moved, without having to look. It is a faculty we never had the chance to evolve in the digital realm. Before we can hope to counter the wolves, we have to be able to sense into, feel and truly experience this realm. To know where we are within it, and to notice when we are being moved. This ties into Sovereignty over Our Digital Selves. You cannot become sovereign over a self you cannot sense. Maybe that is where the practice starts. Not with fighting, but with growing the missing sense.